I was little, maybe 4 or 5. It was a black bat—the old fashioned plastic kind, with the vinyl adhesive eyes that you peeled off & stuck on yourself.

It was the coolest kite in the world.

And technically, it was mine. I mean, if you’re talking ownership, as in, ‘Daddy, will you buy me a kite?’ ‘Sure sweetie. Which one do you want?” So maybe in a court of law  I would have been declared legal custodian of said kite. But from a practical standpoint, if you define ownership by who’s holding the string, notsomuch….

“Is it my turn yet, Daddy?”

“Just let me get it a little higher for you.”

“Now?”

“Not yet.”

He emptied the first spool of cotton kite string, then tied on another.

“Now?”

“Just a little higher.”

It was just a black speck in the blue expanse. I worried that it would hit a plane. I worried that it would get too close to the sun and melt like the wax on Icharus’ wings, or worse—-that it would burst into flames, the fire traveling down all 600 feet of string, instantly incinerating my father (what—you thought my overactive imagination was a recent phenomenon?). He told me to not to worry. But I did. Sure enough, the string began to slacken and fall lifelessly to the ground, and I watched in despair as the coolest kite in the world disappeared. And I never even got a turn.

I cried.

He drove me around the neighborhood for a little while. Every crumpled black trash bag crouched by a chain-link fence elicited a cry of “There it is!” But it wasn’t. I know now that he knew then that we weren’t going to find it. It was one of those parental exercises intended to placate childhood grief and assuage parental guilt.

I bought Ramie a kite yesterday. It was a reward for letting me administer eye-drops. Actually, she lobbied for Great Wolf Lodge, but I’m saving that particular bargaining chip in case I ever need to bribe her into getting an enema. No, I told her, the appropriate incentive for eye drops is a small toy, $5 max.

Ramie has unfortunately inherited my inability to make a quick decision. She is ruled by a drive to make the perfect decision instead of settling for a perfectly good decision, which often leads to no decision, which is usually even worse than a mediocre decision. She agonized over the array of choices: bubbles, a giant magnifying glass, toy spice jars for her play kitchen. After much tortured deliberation, she chose a pink and purple kite, emblazoned with that ambassadress of unrealistic body-image expectations, Barbie herself. 

“Can I hold the string, Mommy?”

“Not yet, sweetie. Let me get it up in the air first.”

“Now?”

“Not yet, honey. Let’s get it up in the air, and then you can hold it.”

“But Mom, you’re having all the fun.”

“Ramie, I’m doing the hard part so that you can hold it once it’s up.”

“But I want to do that part.”

As parents, we have all kinds of opportunities to live vicariously through our children, many of them destructive. But this—–well, this was the best and most blessed of opportunities. Here before me lay the opportunity to get this right, to see in my daughter’s eyes the unbridled joy and victory that I had wanted a share in that day at the park with my father.

I handed her the spool, explained lift and slack, explained that if she got it high enough, it would catch a current that would keep it flying even when we didn’t feel any more wind on the ground. I showed her how to pull on the string if it started to dive. “And,” I told her, “if it crashes, we’ll just try again.”

But it didn’t crash. Turns out my little Mei-mei has some mad kite-flying skills. She’s got the instincts, that one does. Launched it on her first try, and flew it for a solid hour. I watched her run from the back yard around to the front of the house, the quintessential picture of childhood ecstasy.

“It’s pretty high, isn’t it Mom?”

“Yes, baby. It’s really high.”

“I’m actually kind of good at this.”

“Yes, baby. You’re really good at this.”

At her request, I ran into the house to fetch big brother & big sister to come see. Truth be told, I had to fight the urge to run up and down the street knocking on doors, calling “Come look what Ramie did—ALL BY HERSELF!!!”  If we lived in the suburbs and it weren’t so far between houses, I might have done it.

My dad and I had lots of fun when I was a kid. But I think there were probably many times when he used my childhood as an opportunity to relive the childhood he didn’t have. When my father was only 4 years old, his mother was hospitalized. He never saw her again. The fragile string that tethered her frail body to this world broke, and she flew away.

His older sister was shipped off to live with the maternal grandparents, and my dad’s paternal grandmother and aunt moved in to help care for him and his twin sister. His father worked two jobs. He didn’t have the luxury of hanging out and flying a kite with his son.

“Mom, my arm’s tired. And I’m hot. And thirsty. How do we get it down?”

“Would you like me to get it down for you?”

As I wound the kite string, bringing Barbie’s ginormous head back down to earth, I didn’t mourn for the 4year old girl who never got to fly her own kite. Instead, I mourned for the father who never got to watch his 4 year old daughter fly her own kite.

We can spend our time and energy lamenting the mistakes our parents made. We can analyze our various neuroses and shortcomings and trace them back to the dysfunctions of our upbringing. Or we can embrace them, learn from them. We can choose to shrug our shoulders and say, “It was what it was,” and move on.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t go get a kite of my own….