Let's Go Fly a Kite

One day you grow up and you decide to get married, you decide to buy a car, you decide to buy a house, you decide to take a job. You think you decide to have a baby.

But you really have no choice in what baby you get. The baby they put in your arms is a total surprise. And even as you hold her, and kiss her and know beyond any shadow of any doubt that you will love this little person forever – until your dying breath and beyond – you still don’t even know who she is. It is the most out of control you will ever be and it is wonderful and scary and inspirational all at once.

Suddenly, your world shifts, or it should, and all your thoughts are bent on this tiny person, the little girl who stares into your eyes as she nurses.  Your “world” still exists out there somewhere – career, dream, plan. But somehow there is a fish eye lens on the camera and the focus has shifted.

Then a strange thing happens. She begins to grow, unfurl, leave your lap, run down the hall way and “hide” from you. You have spent years talking to her, in the middle of the night, when you go to her in the morning and she smiles at you – a smile that wraps your heart all up in string and squeezes tight – you’ve talked her through her crying jags, you’ve made her laugh by twisting your words into funny sounds complemented by tickling fingers. And suddenly, she starts talking back to you.

Her view of the world from knee-height makes you laugh, makes you cry, and makes you realize that she is watching everything you do. Now, you worry not just about what you are putting in her stomach (for that has always been in the front of your mind) but what you are putting into her heart.

A great thing happens then. Your curiosity all these years finally has a hope of being quenched. You get to see who she is, you get to see glimpses of who she might one day be. She startles you with interests you never had or she might sidle up to you and want to learn everything about what you do.

You try to find activities that fit this new person. What will interest her? What will she want to explore next? You set her on a path, dare to let go and whoosh! She takes off like a kite on a March morning. You know now that you found the right thing as you watch her grow and soar. You laugh in surprise and delight and just a bit of sorrow as the wind of her dreams and hopes takes her up, up , up.

Now, comes the hard part. You can’t let go of the kite string, no she needs you to hold on. Forever. But the trick is to know when to let out the line and give her room to soar higher and higher. But no, mom. Don’t let go.