Let's go fly a kite!

And other bad ideas in the name of nostalgia

Apr 23, 2025

I once heard B.J. Novak (Ryan from “The Office,” among other roles) say that nostalgia is “memory minus anxiety.”

Had I remembered that quote, I might not have suggested to my family that we go fly kites on Easter Sunday afternoon.

I’ve written before about my grandparents’ house and how it was a gathering place for our family before it succumbed to fire more than a decade ago. Easter was one such gathering, and after the eggs had been found and the main meal eaten, we almost always dragged ourselves to the park that was a block from the house to fly kites.

At some point prior to Easter, Grandma would have purchased a bunch of cheap plastic kites from the dollar store, and we would sift through the offerings to find the one we wanted that year. A grocery sack full of extra string from previous years—some of it tangled, some of it intact—would accompany us, and inevitably, one of us kids would have trouble fitting the wooden dowels in place to make the kite a kite.

I remembered none of this frustration, nor the sad attempts at flying kites on days when there was no wind. I didn’t remember running back and forth through the park with a kite trailing behind trying to will it to fly. I didn’t remember it being cold or rainy or being too out of shape to make it work.

All I remembered were the laughs. The pure joy of seeing your kite high in the sky. That’s what I wanted to resurrect on Easter—a tradition we’d let lapse in the years of raising kids and not living near family. Phil tells me that since we’ve been married we flew kites at least once at my parents’ house. I can barely recall it.

It’s those childhood memories that rose to the surface, that were forefront in my mind.

The idea had come to me only a few days before Easter, and I didn’t even know where you could buy kites anymore. The answer, it turns out, is Wal-Mart, a place I rarely frequent, but if we were going to have kites for Easter then we were going to have to brave Wal-Mart on a Saturday. We did, in fact, find kites—they are no longer cheap (is anything really?) and no longer plastic and they PUT THEMSELVES TOGETHER. There is very little fuss in prepping the kite to fly.

Maybe I should have been grateful for that.

I had high (get it?!) hopes for this outing.

Anyway, we picked out four kites and when Sunday afternoon rolled around, we drove to a nearby open space with our kites and our own bag of leftover string. (I have no memory of how this came to be in our house.) We assembled our kites, and I attempted to take pictures, you know for posterity, but eventually decided that if I was going to try to relive my childhood, I wasn’t going to do it with a phone in my hand.

The wind was sufficient for kite-flying. Mine—a butterfly—went up with ease for a few minutes before dive-bombing the ground and then refusing to fly. Meanwhile, my son, who probably wasn’t even walking the last time we flew kites, got his up in the air and quickly ran out of string.

I abandoned my kite to help him tie on a new roll of string so he could keep going with his. In the olden days of our family kite-flying, there were bragging rights for the kite that flew the highest and stayed up the longest. I was annoyed that my teenage son, who has zero experience kite-flying, was showing me up.

Crankiness and cursing were not part of the plan for the day, but there I was, nearly crying in frustration because MY STUPID KITE WON’T FLY. Phil, who is used to such tantrums from me when my competitive nature is at war with my “good ideas,” gently asked questions like, “Do you want my help?” (No.) and “Do you want to try my kite?” (NO!) The two-year-old inside of me wanted to scream: “I DO IT MYSELF!”

Is it too much to ask for me to have fun when it was MY idea?

Our daughter sat calmly on the ground, content to let her kite fly with the string it had been given. Our son ran out of string again, and by that time, I had finally gotten my kite to fly and had added an extra roll of string. Phil’s kite was consistently flying most of this time.

We’re making memories whether we like it or not!

I was able to keep my kite in the air while retrieving string for my son, but I couldn’t help him tie this one on. He struggled and then the inevitable happened—he let go of the string and the kite took off.

Many a time in my childhood, the kite string would break or the kite itself would land in a tree and be stuck there for days or weeks. I always liked to imagine where it would end up when it was free from its tether—in the backyard of some unsuspecting neighbor? In the river? Across town? How far would a kite fly on its own?

My son was not interested in any of this. He tracked his kite in the sky until he watched it fall, then sat down. My kite had dipped at this point and was on the ground again. My daughter’s allergies were acting up and her eyes hurt from staring at the sun. Plus, she was in charge of starting the grill for dinner, so we made plans to leave while my husband rolled up his kite string and handed off his kite to me.

She and I left the boys behind. They were in walking distance of the house, so I wasn’t too concerned.

By the time they actually got home, I was a little bit concerned. It had been longer than I expected, but that was because they found the kite that had gotten away. It was floating in a nearby pond that they had to access via a fence (I do not want to talk about the legality of this). They were able to fish it out and bring it home. (Phil also brought home some ticks on his person, but we won’t talk about that either.)

Was it a successful outing? Depends on how you define “success.”

We left with four kites and came home with four kites.
Every kite was in the air for a measurable amount of time.
To the people passing by, we appeared to be having a good time. (“Nice day to fly a kite,” a bicyclist commented as he passed us. I had been cursing moments before.)

Whether it was or it wasn’t, we made a memory, and I guess that’s what I was going for. I don’t know if my ’80s/’90s childhood was as idyllic as I make it seem in my mind, but I do know there’s no going back to that. I can’t re-create it, no matter how hard I try. I’m older now and my body is not as willing to race through a field for the sake of a kite (even if in my mind I think I can do it).

And that is the least of the issues with trying to re-create my childhood.

Maybe that wasn’t even my goal. I wanted to feel connected to that time of life. I’m still missing my grandma and mulling what her death means in terms of losing that generation of our family. For a brief moment in that field, while all the kites were soaring, I did feel a connection.

Maybe someday in the future my kids will look back on this moment without the anxiety of allergies and frustrated moms cursing while trying to have a good time and kites lost in a pond.

Maybe nostalgia is a gift in that way.