Flying a Kite in the Big Meadow

A simple toy taught some big lessons to a little girl.

It stretched for as far as I could see from where I sat in the car. We drove passed it nearly every day. Giant cottonwoods bordered its grassy expanse where cows and horses once grazed. There may have been a house foundation, but the tall grass hid it from view.

Houses surrounded this fenced remnant of pioneer life. It was just a meadow and always had been, yet it was so beautiful to me. There was some nostalgic yearning for the sweep of early American landscapes that haunted my child's mind. I hoped it always would remain a meadow, even though houses closed in on every side.

One March day when the wind was high, Dad pulled a paper kite from a bin at the store. The paper twisted tight around two sticks connected by a staple. After we pressed the paper flat upon the floor, Dad crossed the two sticks and inserted strings folded within the edges of the paper into slots at the ends of each stick. This stretched the paper over the crosspieces.

I thought it was ready to fly, but Dad said there was a bit more to do. First, he bowed the shorter crosspiece with a length of string. Then he threaded two ends of another piece of string through two holes he punched in the kite and tied the ends to the longer crosspiece. It made a loose half-loop. I couldn't figure out what he would do next. It didn't take long to get the answer. All I had to do was be patient and watch.

Finally, he tied the end of the whole ball of string to the middle of the half loop. He held it up to show me how these connections would make the kite lift against the wind. Okay, that sort of made sense, but to my dismay, we weren't finished yet.

"We can fly this right now," he said, his eye glinting with mischief I'd grown used to seeing. "If we do," he continued, "this kite will spin around and land on its nose. You don't want that to happen, do you?" He could see me fidgeting, trying to hold my eagerness at bay. Just then, Mom came in with an old sheet and said we could tear it up to make a tail.

"A tail? Why would you need a tail?" I was going crazy. When were we going to fly this thing? I didn't realize a simple kite could be so complicated.

"Like I said, honey, the kite will do a nosedive if we don't anchor it with something to balance it upright in the wind."

"Oh," I said, hanging my head, trying to understand this mystery of physics.

After we'd torn shreds of sheet, knotted them into a long strip, and attached that to the end of the kite, we finally, and without further ado, drove to the big meadow to fly the kite.

Usually that meadow was empty, but today, dozens of kids ran around, flying kites. It was as though a planned event had brought everyone out that day, but such supervised community gatherings hadn't become a fixture in the1950s. This was just a March day.

Dad handed me the ball of string which he'd stuck on a stick so I could hold it. As he held the kite up high, he told me to start running. No trouble obeying that command at all. I took off, looking back as the kite climbed effortlessly into the wind. It soared alongside all the other kites dancing in the sky.

When groups of kites bunched together, Dad cautioned me about getting tangled in their strings. He also moved us to the middle of the big meadow to keep my kite from landing in the cottonwoods. As with everything in life, even this simple activity had its rules and etiquette to observe.

My heart soared when my kite reached higher than all the others, shrinking in size as it fled from earth's bounds. Dad taught me how to "steer" it so it veered this way and that. The tail snaked beneath the kite, holding it steady. Even when I steered it far to one side and it dipped downward, that tail pulled it upright. I couldn't believe it was possible to actually guide something buffeted by the wind, but I was doing it. I felt like the captain of a spaceship and the universe was mine.

We flew that kite until shadows from the cottonwoods covered most of the meadow. All the kids and Dads were going home for dinner. As I placed my kite carefully on the car seat, I asked Dad if he could take me to the big meadow and fly my kite again soon. He smiled and said, "We'll see." That was his way to avoid making a promise he couldn't keep. But I knew, someday, I would fly a kite again because Dad had taught me how.