Fly with me
We have a wonderful red Chinese kite that we bought in Shanghai in 2007. It’s a giant squid that flies with beautiful ease, but needs both space and wind. Here in our village we have space, but not much wind. That’s changing with the climate. The wind we get now is gusty, dusty and inconstant. In Zambia I would see children flying homemade kites made from plastic bags as I drove through the squatter towns that circle Lusaka and there were always trapped kites fluttering on the power lines overhead. The kite-flying children were always laughing because flying kites is a magical and liberating experience and kites cost nothing to make. I wrote a short story about a broken-hearted woman and a pink kite dancing between pain and joy. It’s in my short story collection When We Were Wicked
