Strings
The field behind our neighborhood, the back field, was where so many of my childhood memories were made. It was home to the abandoned car that provided my first real kiss… the place where I caught crawdads, played with matches, and rode a mini bike. It was a canvas where my childhood was painted. It was the place I passed on the way to Wheat Check (our neighborhood store) so many times.
I was returning home from Wheat’s on a windy Saturday when I saw my first bat kite! It was shiny. A plastic triangle rippling with big eyes and flying in the back field. I stopped and watched for a while, but never approached the unknown pilot.
I ran the rest of the way home and burst through the door squeaking with excitement for Dad to come look out the back window at this kite! Dad had a unique transitional move from horizontal on the couch to a squat to a stand all in a singular seamless fluid motion like sliding into second base in reverse. I recognized his excitement response to my new magic word… kite.
After he drew a couple of illustrations emphasizing lift, angle of attack, and some trigonometry for my 6 year old brain…
…I said “we should have a kite.” He immediately agreed and I began to race to our rambler calling shotgun even though it was only the two of us. He stopped me in my tracks with… “Oh, we don’t need to buy a kite. We can make our own.”
I was disappointed until I remembered that he makes the coolest paper airplanes that anyone has ever seen, but unlike his purposeful folds applied to a single sheet of paper, building a kite must be like putting a man on the moon.
I followed him to the garage and watched him precisely cut four long skinny sticks of wood and sixteen short skinny pieces of wood. He draped a remnant of wine red sail cloth (leftover from a different project) over his shoulder and put a slot blade and a carpenters square on a scrap of plywood. We returned inside where he pulled glue and a measuring tape from the stove drawer.
He placed the plywood scrap on the dining table and set the rest of the materials to the side. He seated me right in front of it. My view is as if his arms are my arms reaching around me from both sides while measuring and cutting two long strips of sail cloth. His voice gently narrates all actions from just above my head.
Curiosity brought both of my sisters to the dining table. Dad answered “we are making a box kite… who wants to help?” Unanimous yeses reverberated around him. He now had the mission to accomplish and six tiny helping hands to harness as well.
He formed each side of the kite using the sticks, square, glue, and our six hands as clamps. His voice gave directions, but it was his hands squeezing mine with the light steady pressure that taught me how to hold each successive joint of the frame. This mysterious sculpture that we were building was not like any kite that I had ever seen. Unlike all of the classic four sided flat kites, ours was a three dimensional monument with six sides and eight corners and as big as I was.
We all made the trip into Wackers department store and walked somewhat smugly passed the kites for the largest spool of string they had. A couple minutes and thirty-nine cents later we were back at the dining table. Dad suggested that we write a message about our kite, or maybe draw something… anything that we wanted as he ripped each of us a blank page from his tablet.
While we worked on our assignment, he added corner braces, secured the sail cloth seams, and fashioned the rigging on the leading edge of our box kite.
We held our kite in the back field and nervously waited as Dad counted down… 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, LAUNCH! Then a kite that was just built… a kite that we made… a one of a kind way better than a bat kite flew out of our hands and into our hearts. It was going almost straight up! Dad was quickly letting out all of the string on the spool. This box kite that was so huge on our dining table is now so small and so very high in the sky! We shrieked with excitement as we ran to Dad.
One at a time we grasped the now expertly tied off spool. The string stretched with the pull of the wind and my heart swelled with pride for our kite, and for my Dad. This magician of a man constructed something that eclipsed all wishes for a bat kite.
I don’t know how many celebratory minutes passed, but at the perfect time he lifted his white tucked-in V-neck T-shirt and pulled out our three pages. He had Tammy read hers aloud and then he poked the spool through its middle. He crumpled it into a bowl and we watched it shoot up the string so quickly at first, then slowing as it approached the box kite. That kite had been our only focus, but now had suddenly transformed into an impossible destination for our magic flying pages.
Mine was next…. a page full of missiles… roughly forty or so and quite lethal. Up it went mashing firmly against Tammy's message.
Carolyn’s drawing of a cat that looked more like a flower, but still just as thrilling to see it once again fly to our box kite so high in the sky.
I remember so much about that day, but I do not remember our kite ever being reeled in. I don’t remember us ever launching it again. I don’t remember us discarding it. I can’t imagine we would ever let it go. Dad would know what happened to it, but he has long since passed.
I do know that our awkward hands made that kite more difficult to build as I also suspect that our messages were a strategy to distract us while he secured the flight worthiness so vital for our success.
I wonder if he knew that he was building the best kite of our lives?
Sometimes… very rarely and only when I’m at my absolute best… my arms look like his. They reach out as far as his did from my left and my right… expertly adjusting, getting it just right… nailing it! I am grateful for the many Dad moments that conjure such welcome images of him.
Because of him, I know that messages can fly and add some lift to a box kite already in flight and maybe even more lift to us still on the ground. I know that some kites never land and some strings stay attached forever.
Dad and Dean (1st grandkid)