Sunnybook Farm Revisited
By Susan Manzke
I have a few columns that are on my list of favorites. The one that follows is one of them. I don’t need to read it to remember that day on Gardner Road. It’s etched in my brain. Our kids could really get to me back then and I don’t mean with bad behavior. This shows how they could stab me in the heart with only a few choice words.
Go fly a kite
“Mommy, are you awake?” Muffled words spoken inches from my pillow tickled my sleeping ear.
“Mommy, can we do it today?”
“Do what?” I blinked again and again, trying to focus and recognize the speaker. The night’s cobwebs were not easily jarred away.
“Oh, you remember, Mommy, the kite thing. Can we fly it?”
In my muddled condition, I agreed to fly “the kite thing.” It turned out to be a big mistake. I should have checked the weather first before agreeing to the project. I found out too late there wasn’t enough breeze blowing to make a lighted match flicker.
The lack of wind forced me to explain the facts of kite to our young children. “I’m sorry. We can’t fly the kite today, Kids. There’s no wind.”
“But you promised, Mommy. You promised.” Three sets of teary blue eyes looked up at their mother, the traitor.
“Kites need wind to fly. I can’t make them stick up in the sky. The wind lifts them and holds them up. I just hold the string….” Their faces told me they didn’t believe a work I said. They probably thought I was backing out and making up a story. I had to show them the kite wouldn’t fly.
I took their new, tailless kite and raced around the yard. The purple triangle fluttered a foot above my outstretched arm, desperately clinging to the trickle of wind I created for it by running.
“It’s flying! It’s flying!” A cheer went up from the crowd of little onlookers.
“Oh no. That’s not the way a kite is supposed to go.” I panted. “It’s supposed to fly way up in the clouds, with the wind. It’s not supposed to fly because Mommy’s running around the yard like a crazy person.”
“But it was flying. It was flying right above your head. You just didn’t see it because you turned your back.”
“Maybe the wind will be better later,” I said.
“Yeah, sure,” their leader, Robby, said. “We’ll get Daddy to fly the kite later…. He can do it. He loves us. You’re too busy….” He took the kite from me and led the others back to the garage. They marched slowly away from me with their heads bowed and their feet scuffing the gravel.
“I wanted to fly the kite, kids. I really did. I like kites. It’s the wind….” I tagged meekly behind, head bowed, shoulders slumped and kicking at an innocent stone. The darn wind stole my mother’s magic.
