THE KITE

The kite was made entirely from scraps and found materials by my grandfather’s calloused and wise hands. The sticks came from the scrap pile in his wood shop where he fashioned fine cabinetry for his clients, the wealthy who lived on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the fine shops and churches in the Monterey Bay area. The paper was news print, a chronicle of political and social events. The string was found somewhere in a utility drawer among other forgotten items where it had waited for who knows how long to finally be of use. The tail was made of strips of cloth torn from an old discarded red shirt and tied together into a new form, a new glory.

He worked patiently, explaining each step. “We tie the two sticks together like this, you see, to form a cross”, the cigarette always hanging from the left side of his mouth, his gray eyes squinting behind the soiled glasses. Gradually the little kite took form, the strings attached, and finally the red tail.

In the grassy fields near the sea where the others flew their great kites of many shapes, sizes and colors, he handed the little black and white paper kite to me and said, “Now fly it”, and I did. Running into the wind with the kite over my shoulder I saw it rise above me and come to life, turning and tugging at the string. “Give it more line”, he shouted, and the little newspaper kite with the grand red tail rose higher into the sky, happy and alive. I handed the string to my grandfather and he flew the kite so high it became a speck, a small bird, a freedom of life far above us as we watched in silence.

The grandfather, the child, the tiny life tugging at the string. The wise, skilled hands, the young heart beating in the child’s body. Two faces looking up into the sky watching the rising speck of life.

But there was another face there that afternoon, one not seen in the photo. This face was not turned to the sky where the kite flew tugging at the line, but to the old man and the boy. The unseen face looking through the lens of the camera, framing the shot, making the aperture and shutter speed calculations with one part of his mind while realizing with another part and with his heart that this was a true moment in life, a special moment on the grassy bluff with the wind blowing out toward the sea, with the child and the old man looking up at the kite, a moment in life that must be captured, and click, the shutter snaps and the unseen man dissolves having done his deed, fading away forever, no longer a living part of the story. The unseen man, my father.

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Email to the Buffalo

10/01/08 7:10 PM Bersone:

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Very moving account of the kite, my friend. It's as if there's a string somewhere inside all of us that once in awhile gets strummed, and we can feel an accord, an accord between ourselves and others, between our present and our past, between what's inside and what's outside. That accord achieves a balance that let's us be quiet for a moment, to feel something. I remember, years ago, in your apartment in the Marina, which you didn't have too long, capping on this and that, which was our wont, coming up with the title of your first book, "My father's skirts!" created by a slip of the tongue, talking about priests' cassocks, and how we laughed, stoned and drinking red mountain, enjoying Roggieri who had a great laugh, not realizing what lay underneath such mockery. Now this moving piece with the full emotional movement in it. Very nice.