BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF RIO...

I’ve got a collection of photo albums in my upstairs closet.

          They’re all shapes and sizes: There’s a small black one that’s full of old photos of my grandfather; my mother’s album from her youth and college days; a red one with flip pages that my grandmother kept; one my father had when he was at Brown—lots of photos of him being a “sport,” skiing, playing tennis in his white shirt and flannels.

And I’ve got a much bigger one that was given to my parents when they were married in 1942. It’s got some great photos of my pregnant mother, their cocker spaniel, and, finally, my brother John, who was born in Miami during WWII.

My father was stationed there; he flew transport planes for the US Navy. There are lots of photos of him standing beside his plane in his flight suit—leather helmet, for crying out loud, leather jacket and funny dark goggles, baggy pants and all manner and kind of flotation devices.

          His favorite route was a flight from Miami to Rio de Janeiro—he’d stay there for three days, then fly back to Miami. (He once flew off to Rio with the car keys in his pocket, leaving my extremely pregnant mother sitting in the car in her nightgown and a trench coat at the naval air station in Miami...she had to waddle from the car to the entrance gate and beg a ride home from a very amused guard!)

So here’s Rio de Janiero in 1942...

          These photos are two my father took of Rio from the window of his airplane and pasted carefully in his photo album. In the top photograph, you’re looking down at Sugarloaf Mountain as well as a couple of others – there’s one called Two Brothers, but I can’t remember which one it is; there’s Copacobana Beach and Botafogo Cove; Ipanema Beach (of “tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking...”).

          

And there’s downtown Rio, huge and sprawling out around every piece of land in between the mountains; between the mountains and the sea.

          My father loved to fly, and he loved everything about Rio de Janiero—the food, the beaches, the music, the graceful samba.

          He died in 1998, and, for all I know, he’s back there, flying still...