Kite

I remember making kites, or as it were parental units making them for me when I was young. My position in all this kite making was regulated to making the tails long with bows. I always had visions of an enormous rombus with a delightfully painted scene of unicorns and fairies floating higher and higher, far and away to more imaginative places than Abbotsford, BC. However, the reality was somewhat less than stellar. I don't know that my kites were ever the right dimensions and never as large as I wanted to make them. My kites never had that unicorn, though once I managed to draw on a rather depressed looking brown mule on one. Fairies with their long tresses and delicate features were lost in the imperfect usage of crayons. They came out looking much more like Cousin It than Tinkerbell.

My obsession with finding the perfect kite must have started with Mary Poppins - the movie, like many children my age. I always wanted to go out to the park and like those around me, launch my kite into the air and watch it soar to unprecedented heights. All while Dick van Dyck's singing in the background and trying to sell those who need one, a kite. But, I never got a really nice one, I had cheap ones. Never that kind I used to see in the stores on the beach.

Then one year, my brother and I got kites. They were beautiful kites, both rainbow coloured, but different designs and perfectly balanced to fly high and far. My family and I used to go down to Birch Bay, Washington and on those windy days at the beach, we'd fly our kites. Down on the sandbars of the inlet when the tide was way out, we'd walk out and slowly with the sun on our backs come to shore with it. Nick, my brother, and I used to race to see who could get their kite up first, do the most tricks, fly the highest and longest. All the while trying not to scream and let go of the line when the other pelted you with seaweed or anything else that crawled by. My parents in particular enjoyed this activity of distraction and soon all four of us would be running around shouting and screaming.

I don't know why it was so satisfying to fly my kite but I enjoyed it. And, everytime a windy day comes along I think how nice it would be to go and fly a kite.


Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height
Let's go fly a kite and send it s-o-a-r-i-n-g!