Kites

According to the calendar it is still summer, but there can be no doubt that autumn is on its way. Nature has dropped little hints here and there for a couple of weeks already: a spider web drifting by, a certain crispness of the air, giving a slight edge to even the most summery looking day, morning fog lifting from the fields, leaving the slender delicate heads of the grasses bent with their load of sparkling dew drops.

Blue Jays are busy gathering food, robins and flickers, swallows and starlings gather in larger groups on the wires, conversing excitedly, no doubt making plans for their departure for gentler winter lodgings already - winged beings everywhere, even the crimson seed heads of the Amur Maple, proudly displaying fall colouring before the leaves turn and their colour will be no longer prominent, blending in with the backdrop.

The wind, too, has picked up: perfect weather for flying kites! Like so often it reminds me of the first time I lifted a kite high over my head to hand it over to the breeze.

My first kite was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, built by my dad, with a little bit of help from my three or four-year-old self. He measured and cut the thin wooden frame and tied the crossbeams together so that they formed a cross, then made a shallow groove in each about half an inch from the end and ran a thin, but strong length of string through them that connected the ends diagonally, suggesting the kite shape already.

He then laid this contraption down on a big piece of sturdy coloured transparent paper and traced along the string outline, leaving about two inches of paper all around which he then folded back over the frame and glued it to secure it - voila! there we had much of our kite already. It was up to me to decorate it, give it a face, and also cut smaller pieces of paper that would be tied or glued to the tail - the most important feature, he told me, because without it the kite would never truly get airborne. He attached the big spool of kite string, and off we went to a stubble field on the outskirts of my home village of Goddelsheim. Stooks of oats, rye, wheat or barley were still scattered all over the field, for me to hug - my "brothers and sisters" - and to hide in: I was that small.

At first, however, they were of no interest to me: I needed to help fly the kite! I held it at the angle my father told me to and ran with it ("As fast as you can! Hold it high - yes, even higher!") and felt the wind pick it up out of my small hands. It soared so high that I had to put my head way back to see it hover, the giant orange paper bird now seeming to take its cue from the hawks it shared air space with. 

 I still feel the golden stubble under my feet, the wind tousle my hair, so short then that it didn't even blow into my face, still remember the conviction that my dad could do anything: after all, he could build a kite, and fly it, too!

 What a wonderful thing to be shown at such a young age what it means to soar, and hover, to be carried by the wind, and not have to come down for a long, long time.