#kite day

YCH: Kite Day

Previously completed Kite Day YCH I never posted publicly! We REALLY love how this turned out!! It was a really big project and took a lot of time, but was well worth it! Collaboration with @stupidshepherd! I painted the BG, sketched the characters, and shaded. Shep lined and colored the characters!  Owners (in no order): ikrantikawng Splash tatsukimiero nulizz dillpickledickle  rayventail Cereal Velocity AlbinoPolarBear floofcheeks TinyDragonArtist/DraxxyDraws

STREATHAM TALES - KITES

Dayo watched the skies fill with bright canvases, not understanding how they could bear to stay airborne. She knew the physics well enough, how currents of air were pushing the little kites up, up from the ground. But her heart was heavy. Flight, bright colours, that imprecise dancing, all became foreign ideas. She could not comprehend what the faces cartooned onto the kites were smiling about. She did not recognise the characters. And who was she to them?

This year Streatham Common Kite Day had fallen on Pentecost Sunday. Dayo remembered the strange story of the first Pentecost, a few weeks after Easter. Eleven bowed heads together in a house down a Jerusalem backstreet. The rushing wind filling the room. The gentle flames resting on each of their heads. And the sudden babble of voices as they spoke in different languages.

A man with a drooping catfish moustache flew a kite in the shape of a falcon above her. Its broad wings and fanned tail bucked and kicked just as if it were alive. Dayo was reminded of the poem Windhover. My heart in hiding, stirred for a bird.

But she was immersed in the sheer plod of it all. What, after all, were her dreams but a flimsy canvas, thrown about by the wind, and anchored by a heavy reel to the ground?

How had it got to this?

The depression had crept up on her. One day, after another drudge of night shifts, she woke up and felt the sadness. Just sadness sitting in her heart. She had tried to understand it. To excavate it. To unpick why she felt this way. Then one morning she woke alone, tears flowing unstoppably. She came to despise the discomfort of her bed but for long, weeping weeks, she had found herself unable to leave it, even though it meant making her sons late for school again. Instead she stared at the ceiling making shapes from the stains.

She was only at Kite Day because her boys, Zachy and Eli, had dragged her there. They played and shouted, tumbling over each other on the fresh-cut grass, oblivious to her as always.

But - as she looked at the falcon above her. My heart in hiding, stirred for a bird.

***

That was then.

She looks back on that day as the first stirring of something - somewhere between a child's memory of joy and an adult wonder.

Her senses reignited that day - it was the first day she cooked for her children in months, and the first day she picked up the phone to cry herself dry to her listening auntie. The first of many.

Today, her sons, a little taller and louder, shout excitedly as they make shapes out of the clouds. The kites dance imprecisely above her again like dozens of flames. And it no longer feels like a babble.

Today as Dayo raises her hands to shield her eyes from the sun, she sees the people who hold the lines: families; friends; the old teaching the young. She notices children's concentration, the tense attempts to make their kite fly, and the joy when the thing soars.

HAPPY NATIONAL KITE FLYING DAY!

Observed annually on February 8th, National Kite Flying Day is marked by kite flying enthusiasts across the country.

Kites date back to China in 470 B.C. China is full of lore and histories of the origins of the kite. Many are related to the way wind affects the leaves on the trees, the shelters they lived in, blowing away the sails on their ships and the hats they wore upon their heads. The stories also tell of kites being invented to spy on their enemies or to send messages.

There is also evidence that the people of South Sea Islands were using kites for fishing around the same time as the people of China.

Early kites were constructed from bamboo or sturdy reeds for framing, leaves, silk or paper for the sail and vines or braided fibers for the line or tether. While they were initially used as tools, they were also ceremonial as well. Used to send messages into the heavens or to lift offerings up to the gods, kites had a symbolic place in the culture.

Today kites are popular both as hobbies and for outdoor fun. They range from a simple diamond kite to more complicated box kites and giant sled kites. Stunt kites, also known as sport kites, are designed so the operator can maneuver the kite into dips, twists and dives with dramatic effect.

Go outside and fly a kite if weather permits. If not, make one inside.  In some parts of the country, the time of year may make it difficult to fly a kite.  There are kite festivals at various periods of the year. Use today to scout out those festivals and make a plan to join in.  

NaBloPoMo #5: Kite Day

Prompt: What is the most important lesson you learned as a child, and who taught it to you? At my elementary school, all third grade classes participated in “Kite Day.” Kite Day was the precursor to “Field Day,” which was all about making kids be outside all day running around, eating junk food, getting horribly dehydrated, and allowing their teachers to (slightly) relax for a day. The only…