Friday, 02 October 2009

• Kite Day

  As I walked to the library today, the clear sunshine and cold playful breeze provoked strong memories from my childhood. I am left with a thought: today would be a perfect Kite Day.

  Every website result for "Kite Day" comes up with spring dates often sponsored local elementary schools. But in my mind, Kite Day takes place in the fall. Or maybe the very early spring. I'm going off of foggy childhood memories and a single picture which resides in my first picture album, a peeling white floral plastic object that maybe holds 20 photos total.

  It's a shot of my mother running. My dad is standing behind her at a distance. The flat, grey Michigan sky looms overhead, a mirror to the close-mown brown field underfoot. Both of my parents are bundled in poofy coats and slightly hunched against a biting wind. They both clutch kite strings, but with my childish photography skills I couldn't get the kites themselves in frame.

  I thought Kite Day was a national holiday when I was young. It isn't. It was an annual church event that my Dad came up with. My memories of it are murky - murky and cold. I know that I was very bad at keeping the kite up in the air, that my little fingers were always too cold and too painful to work the strings like my parents managed. I know I must have become sullen and tired very quickly. But I remember the strange delight in just watching my parents run across the field and seeing the bright diamonds of plastic follow overhead. It always seemed strange to me, parents running. It seldom happened, so I liked to watch.

  Years later I was in college when my boyfriend picked me up for a "surprise date." He told me to bring a sweater and prompted me to guess what we would be doing.

  "Are we flying kites?"

  He was silent for a beat, looked over at me, and began to laugh. "How did you know?"

  I couldn't explain how I had guessed. Maybe by that point I could already read Ryan's mind. Maybe it just seemed like another Kite Day to me - that floating personal holiday that returns every few years.

  We drove to a secluded park on the other side of town. I was still very bad at keeping a kite in the air - apparently that's not the kind of thing that improves with age. Still we ran across the field until our noses were numb and our backs were sweaty. We laughed as we tried to figure out the physics of which direction we should run in to keep the kite in the air the longest. I grew tired and my fingers numb, and before long we just sat in the car talking.

  I think it's time for another Kite Day.

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