Guest Blog: Go Fly A Kite!

By Joann Storck

If you are a Baby-Boomer-Plus-One (year, that is) then I’m sure that at least once or twice in your lifetime you were waved away by someone and told to “go fly a kite”.
     Have you just been dismissed by someone who seems to be annoyed with looking or talking to you?  Or have you just been invited to do something so wonderful you will stand and hold the string tight as your bright, errant kite reaches higher and higher into the endless blue canopy above; and all the while you are smiling like the years fell away and you are a kid again?

      I’m going to focus on the meaning where you get to giggle and run like a child again, even if that arthritic knee gives you some backtalk for not accepting any limits, anywhere, as your riot-colored kite dips and dives and flaps in abandon.  You’re running again, just like when you played “tag” with the neighborhood kids after supper.  Was that about a million years ago?

      The child who was me in 1950 must have been wise enough to take precious mind-pictures of days like this because I can effortlessly go back 60 years see our old box kite that our dad and grandpa made from a roll of butcher paper connected to slim pieces of wood and string.  We kids preferred our blue, red, yellow or purple paper kind, but the boys inside those men grinned from ear to ear as the ungraceful box kite rode the air stream.  In the present day I’m looking at my store-bought variety with big splashes of strong colors and a bright, red, plastic tail.  Again, it strikes me that the kites of old dangled with a strip of a rag torn from an old shirt – if you were lucky enough not to have to keep wearing that old shirt.  No one’s here with me that I can subject to these incredible tales of generational deprivation and compare it to the vulgarity of "playrooms" of toys that kids have today.  That’s okay.  Why ruin this beautiful experience with becoming a crabby grump?     

      Oh!  I can’t let this apparition appear and not let out a squeal of delight as I spy a cloud up there, in that rapturous sky:  that most definitely is a mama duck!  And, look!  Five little babies are following her with their little tails up in the air.   Uh-oh.  My kite is challenging me for control as it pulls and tightens the string in my hand, nearly slicing my skin.  The kite bows out; the wind wants to take it away from me and help it escape to the place where all this brilliant blue begins.   It’s such a strong pull that I can’t do much more than hold it tight and hope that the wind gives out before I do.  I walk along the ridge of the hill and give the kite some of the same independence it has given me today.  I want to bring it back to earth now so I can keep it safe on that shelf in the corner of the basement.  Having done that, I congratulate myself that I can still be as happy as a child and as free as a bird… or a kite.