For Valentines Day Weekend

A boy was walking on a vast, blustery beach, picking up shells and rocks and examining the driftwood that had washed ashore. His eyes were pointed at the ground so he didn't see the kite until he nearly stepped on it.

He stopped. The kite was broken and dirty. It looked as if it had been tossed about the beach for a long time.

He decided to pick it up and see if it was worth salvaging.

Despite the mistreatment the kite seemed to have had, he thought he could repair it and make it fly again. He took it home and glued the wooden slats that made up its frame. He wiped clean the plastic diamond that made up its body. He strengthened the long tail and fixed it so it hung straight. With a new spool of string, the kite looked almost as good as new.

Back to the beach he ran. He held the string and let it out, a little at a time. The kite faltered. It flailed back and forth in wild gusts and nearly crashed to the ground, again and again.

He held the kite up as high as he could reach and sped down the beach. As he ran, he let the string out little by little. Finally the kite took off! It flew right beside him, its tail fluttering in the wind.

After a while he didn't have to run. He slowed to a jog, and then to a walk and then stood still, holding fast to the string of the kite. For a long time the kite flew, right where it was. It was steady and pretty, flying there in the sunlight.

Suddenly, the winds began to shift. The kite darted left, then right, then wildly left and even more wildly right. Each time the kite whipped to one side or the other, it fell a little lower.

He ran on the beach, again, trying to get the kite to stay steadily in the air, but it kept dipping and swerving in a maddening way. It pulled hard against his hand. He wound the string around his palm and held on tight.

It was tiring, constantly keeping that tension between him and the kite. He looked at the spool of string and realized that if he let more out, the kite might fly better.

He thought about this for a long time. He liked keeping the kite low, where he could see it in the sun, but he could see that the kite was not going to fly well where it was.

Slowly, he let the string out.

The kite lifted. Higher and higher it soared until it was just a speck in the blue summer sky. Even though he could hardly see the kite anymore, he knew it was doing what it was meant to do.

He was a little sad that the kite was so far up in the air. It was soaring so high he could hardly see the colors, or make out anything other than its distant shape in the sky.

But still he held on because he knew that, even though the kite was soaring, if he let the string go it would come crashing down to the earth, more broken than ever.

To my husband:
Thank you for not letting go.