The Inevitable Pain of Growing Up

It was the first airplane we noticed when we arrived at Brown Field--big, blue, imposing. Tough looking. Larger and more powerful than the other World War II fighter planes assembled for the “Wings of Victory” air show. An airplane that seemed almost invincible.

It was the plane that caught and held the attention of my dad, a pilot during the war, and his 5-year-old grandson Christopher, about as much as did the big, heavy bombers we were to see later in the day. The Blue Max.

Like the rest of us, Christopher had heard his grandfather tell countless stories about the war, stories about the airplanes and the men who survived and those who were lost flying them. Each story was told with a certain mixture of reverence and magic, polished by memories now more than 40 years old.

But this was his first chance to actually walk right up and touch one of these airplanes, to get his own sense of what his grandfather’s stories were all about. Until now, they had been only visions of life’s excitement, it’s everlastingness, and nothing about it’s end. Flying airplanes, even in war, he thought, was fun. It was an adventure. The good guys against the bad. And, as any child can tell you, in such encounters the good guys always win. They always live to fight another day. Just like in the cartoons.

I took several pictures of my father and my son with the big blue U.S. Navy F4-U Corsair. And all the while I could see the 5-year-old mind working, thinking ahead to when he might fly an airplane like this, in a time that surely will be here before his parents are ready for it.

Another, smaller airplane--a Cessna hospital plane--diverted Christopher’s attention for just a while. The pilot even was kind enough to let him sit inside the red-and-white single-engine craft, headphones on, hand on the stick, while his very prideful father took pictures of his son. Christopher enjoyed that, but when it was through he raced back to the big Corsair.

Watching Christopher move underneath and all around the airplane again, I remember thinking about the name “The Blue Max,” conjuring up my own memo ries of the movie 20 years ago, in which the young, fearless German pilot--played by George Peppard--flew the brand new airplane named for World War I Germany’s highest flying decoration. I thought briefly about how, at the end of that movie, the young pilot crashed and was killed at an air show, just moments after so many people had gathered around to see it.

My wife and I began to talk about Christopher’s remarkable fascination with the airplanes, a fascination that seemed to grow as the afternoon wore on. We even debated the merits of his flying when he was older. He says he wants to be a pilot when he grows up, I told her, just like his grandfather. But my wife was less impressed with the prospect. To her, these were nothing more than a little boy’s momentary fascinations with things he simply cannot even begin to understand. When he grows up, she said, the sharp, cold realities of the world will lead him to reconsider.

And taking into account the almost complete malleability of the 5-year-old mind, perhaps she was right. But at the same time, it was an almost romantic notion, acted out in large measure as a tribute to his grandfather, and to all the others who had flown in that dangerous time. My father always had wanted to fly and had done so almost from the time he was old enough to drive. But the line of succession from father to son had been broken with me, owing both to a mortal fear of heights and a much more urgent desire in my youth to be Sandy Koufax rather than Pappy Boyington. But perhaps Christopher’s memories of this day would take root and remain. And in so doing, the cycle would be renewed, this time from grandfather to grandson.

No matter, this and all of life’s other options would work itself out in time. Right now, it was simply a chance for a grandfather to look back 40 years in time, and for a little boy to look ahead almost as many. For me, right in the middle, it was an opportunity to do both. Then it was time to go.

In the late afternoon we heard the news that The Blue Max had gone down, its passengers killed. And in that instant, the romance massaging my ideas was washed away, and in its place the dull ache of understanding that, indeed, there is an end to life and to dreams. And sometimes--all too often, in fact--that end is neither anticipated nor fair.

I knew Christopher was looking for a way to understand just why this was so, but for the moment I decided not to try to explain that inevitability to him. At 37, I’m not sure how much of it I understand myself. But, we still have the pictures, taken on a pleasant and still very memorable afternoon. I know that someday his questions of just what happened to The Blue Max, and why, will be brought up again. He may wonder why this had to happen just hours after he had enjoyed it so.

In the meantime, I’ll let him keep the pictures by his bed, alongside those of the football player, the cowboy and the movie star. No sense making him grow up any sooner than he absolutely has to.