Comfort at the End of a String

I found a kite, in its original packaging, under the bed last week.

That explains the flying dreams.

I can’t recall the moment in time long ago (still well into my adulthood) when I thought I needed one, or where I bought it, why I picked this particular design and style over others, or how it ended up under the bed. But I think I was supposed to find it this summer, right after Patrick mowed that section of the grass that runs parallel to the uncut and wild old corn field. No electric wires or trees there; just the remnants of a potato garden now overgrown and dotted with hopeful sweet gum saplings that are easily on their way to a small forest (gifts from our friends Mike and Deb five years ago, dug up from their place and transplanted one chilly day-after-Thanksgiving before we sat down to butternut squash soup and sweet conversation). It’s good and breezy today, a most welcome addition to the unblocked sun as it pulls the red line of the thermometer upwards toward the low 90’s. Perfect kite conditions.

I haven’t been on the operator’s end of a kite string since I was still celebrating single-digit birthdays. In those days (triceratops and gigantic ferns only recently extinct, har har) we were glad to make our own kites from long thin pieces of balsa wood and leftover gossamer dry cleaning plastic bags. My brother, Mike, was the supreme kite architect, sometimes taking an hour or two in the morning to actually sketch the design in blueprint fashion before gathering the raw materials and setting about to constructing it. Fidgety and bored with this step in the process, I wandered about doing other youthful single-digit aged things (these did not include folding clothes, cleaning my room or offering to help mom with the breakfast dishes) until he finally put down his pencil and picked up the first slim piece of balsa. I wanted to watch him cut the notch in the spine where the spar would intersect, creating that magical nexus point that would bear the wind’s strong breath and resist it as one of us held fast to the string-wrapped stick dangling at the long and far away end of the kite’s bridle. They’re a bit elusive now, the visuals of this memory, but I think some kind of vaporous glue was involved, squeezed more or less judiciously from a crinkly aluminum tube. Even in a well-ventilated area like the patio out back, we still got slightly buzzed and dizzy (is this where “high as a kite” comes from? I’ll have to look that one up…).

Whatever transpired after that, once the glue had dried and it was Time to test our homemade kite assembly prowess, I remember absolute giddiness and joy, that something we created by hand worked as it was intended. Even if it snagged on a tree branch a while after takeoff, it was worth it.

I wonder what other precious and cherished childhood pursuits I’ve pulled out from under the metaphorical bed, dusted off and set in motion again in my adult years? There’s a lot of that going on lately, as we continue to navigate these relentlessly scary days of ours. The almost-panicked and frantic search for comfort is now a daily ritual; we soothe our bad news-saturated nerves with whatever reassured us in our formative years—Dick Van Dyke Show and MASH reruns, baked chicken on Sundays (insert any food here—we’re baking and cooking like it was just invented), and we’re stitching quilts and trinket bags and pillowcases as if our Home Ec teacher was grading us. Every day, we stack these like sand bags against the rushing waters of an unknown future, protecting the one commodity that will see us though to the other side—our individual and collective emotional grit. We’re resilient at our core—we know this—and it’s unsettling to feel the continuous push of everything beyond our control. Our hearts and fingers reach for the familiar (I’ve given up on “normal”) and grab tight for as long as it lets us. Just get me through today. It’s both plea and unflinching directive.

Even threadbare and tentative, I think it’s working most days. I asked a dear friend recently, as she faced down an onslaught of Whack-a-Mole family crises, how she triaged her mental health through it all. Without a trace of shame or embarrassment, she admitted to letting herself fall apart in hysterical, dramatic and cleansing style. Then she picked the crisis most in flames and got on with it. She also sews and has a menagerie of pets to turn to, some of whom sit nearby while she unleashes the storm, which as any pet owner knows, is some of the best therapy around (for the price of a few vet visits and some foil pouch treats. Nice.). I am heartened by her strategy, and grateful for her vulnerability.

For me, in this tiny sliver of The Present Moment, a freshly-mown grassy runway and a nylon kite at the end of a long taut string will do it.

There’s also some leftover homemade peach galette in the fridge.

Bonus!