It was morning and I had coffee with a friend at a restaurant. The wind had really picked up. We sat outside the restaurant and tried to speak while whips of hair impeded our speech, making us laugh. It was windy all day. All morning and all afternoon. So much wind.
The afternoon felt heavy before it had really begun. It felt like too much. Dan wasn't going to be home for three hours and I knew the witching hour was approaching. I had already spent my energy for the day, but my 6-year old had not. She was pacing the floor after school asking for her battery of requests. Snacks. Playdates. No chores. It's a very whiny time of night.
"Let's fly a kite," I told her. I already had it in my hand and was heading for the back door. The kite is the shape of a cat flying in the air. My older daughter named the kite "Hobbes" after her favorite comic strip. It's really a ridiculous sight. Cats don't fly.
My youngest grabs the kite in her excitement. She is running backwards, holding the mess of fabric and excitedly talking about our adventure. I have told her too many times to not run or walk or skip or do any motion backwards. She falls, splaying over a scooter, sending the kite and string in many directions. She scoops up the kite irreverently with the unraveling string and heads for the back fence. I shake my head, not sure this kite will ever gain altitude.
In my mind, I am reviewing the rules of kite flying and realize that we might be in trouble. We have the wind and the large, unhindered space. We have the mechanism but the string has no way to give. It is caught on itself. A kite without a string is just airborne litter.
I can already feel the situation turning stressful. My daughter Eve is not known for patience. This comes as no surprise to me. My DNA runs deeply in her veins. She is clumsy and active and creative and full of life. All evidence of my genes.
She runs to the field behind our house and expects the kite to take flight. I grimace at the knot of string which will suspend our flying cat. I set my expectations to level zero and instead choose to make the best of the moment.
I try my best to unwind the bulk of the string. I ignore the knots and clumps. I stretch a length of string which is roughly twenty feet, maybe thirty. Whatever it is, it doesn't feel like enough. I tell her to hold the string while I take the triangular tip of the kite and point it toward the sky. "Run!" I tell her. "RUN, RUN, RUN!" She takes off wildly. The kite darts up and smacks the ground almost immediately. I'm not giving up. I pick it up again and we try this exercise again and again until the kite begin to looks less like a plow bouncing on the ground, digging up clumps of grass.
The wind was playful that day and finally swept the kite straight into the air, allowing it to suspend strong and steady for a few moments before batting it like a kitten.
Eventually Eve decided to run wildly around the field and I was left holding the string, feeling the wind tug and shift the kite. Without the pressure of trying to keep the kite afloat for my daughter, the moment felt strangely meditative. It surprised me. Here I was, standing in a field, using what I had, not mourning what I did not (more string, that is) and gauging the direction of the wind by a mere pull on the handle. The wind would pull and release and swat and guide and push. It was all very invisible and intuitive, making exchanges with the wind. I was connected with the sky.
Later a few neighbors joined us and each one seemed to stand in their own swaths of grass, letting their kites guide them while not entwining with the others.
When our faces were flushed with outside air, Eve picked up the kite and took it inside the house. She threw it on the floor in a heap and skipped away joyfully. Usually I insist that she picks up her shoes and her mess and, in this situation, the kite. Something in the moment told me to just be still.
I let her run wildly up to her room, caught up by the exhilaration of being outdoors. She is my carefree kite, dancing with the breeze. I am her anchor holding snags of string, realizing my inadequacy, holding the mess of what ties us together gently and releasing what I have into the wind.
