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Flying Kites Make
The Mind Soar
On a recent afternoon with spring in the breeze, something else wonderful was in the air: a kite.
Shortly, a second kite rose.
Like bookends separated by a long row of volumes, these two park scenes played out with an hour sandwiched between. Each vignette made me smile. Together, they made my heart soar as if aided by the wind and a knotted rag tail.
Before proceeding, a third kite bears mention – this one flown a quarter-century ago by my daughter, then four. It was her first kite and she had impatiently waited many days for the wind to be strong enough for a maiden flight.
If memory serves, and I am certain it does for this remains a cherished image, My Little Girl skipped to the park while happily singing the “Mary Poppins” lyrics, “Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring. Up through the atmosphere. Up where the air is clear…”
After getting her 99-cent rainbow kite airborne, I handed the string to My Little Girl and her reaction, along with a beaming smile, was this: “Daddy, it feels like catching a big fish in the sky.”
This was a wonderful observation considering My Little Girl had never felt the tug of a fish.
Which brings me to the first kite I sighted this spring. Another little girl, perhaps six instead of four, was flying a kite decorated with a unicorn instead of a rainbow. Watching from afar, I readily imagined she also was likely thinking of fishing in the sky …
… because instead of holding a spool of cotton string, this little girl controlled her kite with a fishing rod and nylon line in a reel. What an ingenious father she had, I thought.
Too, I thought back to climbing a tree to retrieve My Little Girl’s rainbow kite after the string snapped and it fluttered into the clutches of branches. We promptly went to a kite store and got nylon “rope” as she called the heavier string.
Time passes, but not all things change. The little girl with the unicorn kite tethered by fishing line seemed as excited as if Christmas morning had arrived on a June afternoon. When the breeze held its breath too long, she handed the rod and reel to her father and skipped off to retrieve her grounded kite; held it high overhead; and then giggled when her father got it back up where the air is clear.
I could have watched this all afternoon, but too soon the happy pair departed hand-in-hand.
Not five minutes later, a second kite flyer arrived and the contrast could hardly have been more striking. Now I watched a gentleman, in his sixties I guessed, and alone; sailing a stunt kite without a fishing reel but with multiple strings that allowed him to make it zig-zag and spin and even dive to within inches of the ground before soaring again.
Again, the fishing metaphor was impossible to ignore for the gentleman was wearing a flannel shirt, stained pants and a brim hat that begged to be decorated with tied flies. Sitting in a folding beach chair, he seemed to belong lakeside or on a pier.
As the gentleman flew his kite, seated patiently as if waiting for a big fish to strike his line, my mind returned to the little girl I had just seen; then to My Little Girl; and finally I had one more lovely thought.
I imagined the gentleman’s mind was also wandering, drifting backward on the warm breeze to memories of flying a kite with his own little girl.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …
- Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com