Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
The Undocumented Bumble Bee Kite
I am trying to live an undocumented life but it is very difficult when one’s practice is to document everything.
This afternoon, flying a bumblebee kite, I thought about how I ought to take a picture of the kite, more specifically the string running from my hand to the bumblebee’s chest. That line, that string against a completely blue sky was the perfect shot so I looked around for my husband to ask him to get my phone because part of my undocumented effort is to quit carrying my phone in my pocket all the time.
But he’d gone inside after watching the beginning of the kiting, if that’s what they call it, and I knew he was probably napping. It was a July afternoon on vacation, after all, what else would he be doing? It wasn’t even worth yelling, the wind would drown out all but the shrillest, most terrifying scream and I wasn’t ready to go to such lengths just to take a picture.
Besides, I thought, one can remember things. I remember that when we were kids, my brother, who was nine years older than me, could make a kite out of newspaper and balsa wood. Having newspaper laying about seems common but why we had a ready supply of balsa wood I couldn’t tell you. My folks were handy, though, so they had stuff like vast assortments of nails and screws, tools of all sorts, tiny screwdrivers, vices that would hold thing still, my dad could fix a toaster and tie a fly, my mother turned dresses into curtains and vice versa, all of which goes by saying, of course, we would have balsa wood and probably enough lumber to make a rowboat if the need arose.
So my brother would make a kite, I can see him doing this in my mind’s eye, the newspaper spread out on the kitchen floor and then when the kite was done he’d tear up old cloth to make the tail. “It needs more tail,” he would say, and then outside when we tried to fly it, he’d say it again, “It needs more tail.” Then flying a kite seemed like something I would never be qualified to do, at least not without my brother.
I don’t have a picture of my brother making a kite or flying one. I have almost no pictures of my brother, even though for many years he was my great defender and caretaker. He wasn’t making the kite for himself, he made it for me. That’s what I remember.
So I flew the bumblebee kite today with my 15-year old granddaughter and 6-year old twin grandsons. Then my granddaughter put together a second kite, a Little Mermaid kite, and we took turns flying both kites but for long stretches of time I flew the bumblebee kite by myself, the wind blowing hard off Lake Superior and the kite flying as high as its string would take it. I am so lucky, I thought. I am so lucky to fly this kite. I don’t need a picture to remember my great luck.
But as it happens, there was a picture taken and so I share it here with you.
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Originally published in 2019
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Thank You, Jan … For documenting events from your “undocumented” life and for waking up several kite stories in my past, all but one of them delightful.