Go Fly a Kite...

from PDphoto.org

Woke up this morning singing that song from Mary Poppins:  Let's go fly a kite...  You probably know it.  That was my favorite movie when I was a kid, the music still cheers me up.  When I watch the movie again (oops...let out my secret!), I giggle myself silly in that scene where they're floating around the room because they are laughing. 

Somewhere, someone called March the month for flying kites.  But you know, I think March is way too blustery in this neck of the woods for kite flying.  April is a better time and May too. 

I grew up in Nebraska, and one would think that is the perfect place for flying kites.  There is plenty of flat space for running, and the wind never stops blowing.  I never got a kite off the ground when I was a kid there.  I always thought it was my fault...I couldn't run fast enough, or there was something lacking in my basic understanding of kite flying...it seemed mysterious to me, out of my reach.  I remember trying to make a kite on my own.  Of course those poor newspaper kites blew apart in moments.  As I look back on the reality however, the wind never stopped blowing on the prairies.  I don't ever remember seeing some park full of people flying kites.  Once in a great while, some brave soul would be there, wrestling to capture the wind.  But such flat places don't have trees to stop the wind, which is often a wild thing that turns into tornadoes in May and sometimes June.  In the summer, the winds are hot on your face. I think of August in Nebraska when I open the oven too quickly and the heat comes rushing out at me.   Well, you get the drift (as it were!).

Here in upstate New York there are a great many trees, however, there are plenty of meadows and places where flying a kite would be possible.  Is kite flying a lost art?  I still come across them in toy stores, especially at the beach where the wind also blows mightily when you're on the beach, without the protection of trees.  But again, I haven't seen much kite flying there either.   Computer games and such have taken over old pass times.  Ha!  Listen to me.  I just googled kite flying festivals, and upstate New York has it's own club.  NYKE  (New York Kite Enthusiasts), and the kites are quite a sight to behold. 

It's not exactly a kite flying day today, but maybe one of these days I will pick out one of the really fancy kites and try my hand at it again.  There's something magical about holding that string in your hands, feeling the pull of the wind and thinking that you have control of some dancing, colorful paper up in the sky.  I feel as though I'm flying myself.