The Kite that flies with you

Summer in the Philippines is when kids are out on the streets, crying (it seems), “No more classes, no more books, no more teachers…!” Hmm, sounds familiar.  

Summer is also when the winds are quite happy to blow the heat away, as well as play with the children’s kites that danced in the sky. 

I remember the first time my younger brother and I attempted to make a kite out of old newspapers and thin sticks locally called “walis tingting” (locally used for sweeping the yard). It was summer. 

We once lived in a place we called “Bundok,” which literally means “mountain.” It wasn’t really a mountain, but an undeveloped place in Fort Bonifacio, Makati, where few people lived. 

One afternoon, Nel and I were trying to make paper kites. The left-over rice was almost gone from the rice pot; Mama’s thread on her sewing machine was almost used up; each old newspaper and walis tingting seemed to dread our hands as we tried to make a kite–the kind “that flies in the sky.” 

We’d make one and then try to make it fly. I did the throwing, he did the string-pulling, and together we did the running. Around the outside of the house we’d run and eagerly hope that it would fly–like the kites of other children in the distant neighborhood. I can’t remember the number of kites we made that day and the number of times we sweat them all out in the yard, but I remember how much we panted after each “test flight.”  

Mama must have caught my walking back and forth between the kitchen and the front yard; the caldero’s cover always made a suspicious sound, though my clumsy hands did everything to avoid making any noise while I tried to get our “paste.”

 

“I’ll make you a kite.”

 

We looked up; it was Mama. 

“You know how to make a kite?” we excitedly asked. 

“Yes, of course! It’s so easy, you know.” 

She started to make a kite. But she was making it in a different way, there was no walis tingting at all. My brother and I looked at each other. 

“Mama, would that kite really fly?” I was anxious. 

“Oh, yes,” she said confidently. “You know, your Aunt Erming and I used to make and fly kites.” 

My wide-opened eyes saw that it was quite easy to make. It was a simple kite with no frame at all. It was what she called a “boca-boca” kite: just a tail, a string, and a piece of creased old newspaper. But Mama said it could fly, so Brother and I run around again with our usual “test flights.” 

Panting, we complained, “Well, Mama, it wouldn’t fly in the sky!” We told her that the kite only flew when we ran, but when we stopped running it also stopped flying.

 

“Oh,” Mama laughed, “that’s just the way it flies. It just flies with you.”

 

That day, we were never able to make and fly a kite “that flies in the sky.” But Mama’s kite–the kite that flies with you–flew with me. It’s still beautifully flying today in my heart.