“You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you’re both breathless…they crash…they hit the rooftop…you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly. Finally, they are airborne.” – EB

I was in a road trip for Malolos, Bulacan last week. For months of living in the hustle and bustle of Metro Manila, I suddenly felt joy of having the wide, vast expanse of green land from my window. The trip only took an hour but I had happy moments of reminiscing my childhood and my province in the south resembling to the province of Bulacan.

As I was peeping through my window sitting in the bus, I saw a little girl trying to make her kite fly. She was running in the field with her right arm clinging to a string attached to a newspaper and few fragile sticks, she was running along with the wind. Her image made me smile as I have been like her when I was still in grade school.

Under the scorching heat of the sun, or in the late afternoon with other kids my age, together we would run the whole day during summer. With sweating brows and back we don’t mind as long as we made our kites fly.

I have consumed a lot of paste, newspapers, sticks and threads though. My mother would even have to hide her sewing box of fear I might ransack again and again her collection of threads for mending clothes. But that did not deter me. I saved up some of my allowance to buy a roll of strong thread.

I have consumed a lot of materials before I made my first kite – a perfect kite, balanced in weight and can surely fly. A kite that can withstand the strong wind, stay easy in the atmosphere, gliding at my control and returns with me when I come home.

I have always been full of hope when making my kites. I was hopeful that the one I am making would fly, if not today, perhaps tomorrow after analyzing and fixing its flaws. My friends had the biggest kite, the most colorful and most beautiful. Jungjung had a butterfly-like kite, Rey had the sharpest tip that could ravage other kites in the air, and the Sta. Maria’s had the longest tail. Well, they had their fathers who made it. While I have the simplest kite of all, but I am mighty proud that it is mine for I made it myself. The one I took hardships on making it.

Cut here. Paste it there. Wrap some rubber band here and there. Attach some string here and there and hoping it will fly.

Thank God, I did not graduate from grade school without ever learning how to make a kite of good materials and make it fly. Just as I have believed, I have learned something valuable through the kite.