FTIAT: Annual Kite Flying Day
Reneé (Lessons from Teachers and Twits) writes such lighthearted, fun entries, it’s startling the first couple of times you read her comments and realize her entries reflect but a small portion of an enormously complex, enormously beautiful soul. A teacher to the core, in almost all her words can be found a lesson.
One of the lessons contained in this entry is perhaps the most powerful to carry through rough times: the hardest lessons learned are also the ones that most illuminate the joy of what follows.
Recommended post: Lessons from Eight Junes
Annual Kite Flying Day
One August, a man that I loved tried to kill me.
Only he didn’t kill me.
Earlier that day, we had gone kite flying.
I stood quietly by his side watching the blue of the kite blend with the blue of the sky, watching him control the kite, make it do what he wanted it to do.
Later that night, he took my body and showed me that his was stronger.
That he was in control.
His leg weighed tons, and I couldn’t wiggle out from underneath him. At first, I thought he was just fooling around but he wasn’t laughing and he didn’t get off of me even when I told him I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t scream, but I should have.
Afterwards, he took my head and tried to make me believe that he wasn’t a monster.
But he was.
Even though he sent me long, love letters filled with apologies.
Even though he put a heart-shaped rock on the windshield of my car.
Even though he tried to make me remember sweet, summer peaches.
I could only picture them bruised and split down the middle.
I remembered how he pushed me under water and tried to drown me.
How it almost worked.
Except it didn’t.
Every August, for over twenty years, I find myself remembering this man.
And, strangely, I feel an odd sense of gratitude.
Because that night, in a stranger’s room, in a borrowed bed, I learned that I could
be broken.
But I also learned that I could put myself back together again.
And somehow, it is August again and I find myself in a park wrestling with a kite.
It is windier than usual and tough to fit the cross spars in their slots because the kite fights me impatiently.
I think it knows what I have planned.
Finally, I stand up. The tails snap, wanting.
I run backwards, feeling the pull.
I run, turning my back to the wind.
With the front of the kite facing me, I release it into a gust and pay out line and pull back to increase the lift.
In thirty seconds the kite is far out over the lake, pulling hard.
I run around the muddy field, making the kite dip and soar, dive and swirl.
From the ground, I control that rainbow diamond in the sky – make it answer my commands.
I remember how he hated things that refused to be controlled and so it is with great swelling pleasure that I release a new kite each year.
I like to imagine him chasing after the dropped driftwood reel, his hands outstretched, the Screaming Eagle kite a quarter of a mile up, blazing.
Blazing.
Like me.
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Oh, my goodness, this is powerful! I’m so glad you had the strength to break free of this horrible man. Spunky and determined are always the first words that come to mind when I think of you. You are a force to be reckoned with and I’m so thankful that you survived and are even stronger for it. You have much to be thankful for!
I love this post!
Thanks Sprinkles. This was very hard to “put out there.” I’ll never be truly free of this person, but I am not broken anymore.
Oh my dear friend Renee. I cry as I write my response to this, because although I’ll never write about it on my blog, for here is a safer place, the same thing has happened to me. In order to protect my son, I will never write about many of the details I experienced during my time with his father. I am so proud of your response. Not just to this, but to life, and the ups and downs we experience. I believe God is using you to shine a light that says, “There is life after pain.” Thank you for being vulnerable enough to share this. Not only was it gutsy, it is so beautifully crafted.
Thank you so much, friend. Like you said, I would never post something like this on my own own blog, but I was grateful for Deb, for providing me with an opportunity to reflect on something else besides “teacher” stuff and to show people another side of me and my writing. I’m so sorry to learn that you have a had a similar type of experience. But I’m glad we know this about each other now. Sister survivors.
What a great metaphor. Thank goodness you found yourself, rose up and somehow walked away. Powerful story and graciously written. May this be a story for mothers, their daughters and granddaughters.
Georgette:
It’s not a metaphor. I did this for years. For real. I didn’t do it this year because we went on vacation. For the first time, I couldn’t go back. But I’m grateful for that, too. Maybe it is time to stop that, too.
Wow. Just wow. So powerful. Thank you.
Thank you for responding, Julie. Even that means a lot.
Thank you for sharing this! It’s beautifully written and I’m so inspired that you’re able to reflect on such a difficult time with gratitude.
Hi Jules: To be fair, it has taken many decades to be able to get to the gratitude part, but I’m there. Have been for some time now. And I can help other people who find themselves in similar situations.
You’re amazing, Renee.
Thanks Craig. I aim for “like totally awesome,” but I’ll take “amazing” any day.
Excellent. May your story help others, Renee. Thank you for your transparency. You created such a wonderful metaphor for such a horrible experience, proving light can escape through the darkness.
Thank you, Lenore. Your words are so appreciated. The idea of “transparency” in this area was unfathomable to me a few decades ago. Now it just feels like dropping a lot of heavy bags on the floor and walking away from them.
That was beautiful.
Thank you for giving me perspective today.
How is that even possible? You are the one who usually provides me with perspective? I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I’m shaking as I tap out these comments.
*hugs*
It was just a raw, beautiful depiction of someone who could find something good in such a bad situation. And very brave of you to put it down on paper.
(Also, the nitpicker has to mention that it was brilliantly written. Your said so much with so little. Your word choice, you sentence structure: it is amazing.)
That was one of the most powerfully moving posts I’ve read in awhile. I am just struck to the core with the images and the emotions that welled up as I read it. Thank you for sharing such a personal story, Renee. And the ending “blazing. like me.” I am speechless. You are an incredible woman.
Dear Maineiac:
On any given day, I don’t necessarily feel like I’m “blazing” — especially when I’ve fallen down a flight of stairs or put on mismatched shoes. (True and true.) But on this particular anniversary, each year, I truly do. Thank you for your sweet words of support.
That is very scary! Good for you for putting yourself back together!
Like Humpty Dumpty, right?
My mind has returned to this entry many times over the last days. Every time, I’ve found tears in my eyes as I consider your strength–in surviving, in sharing this, in shining a light for others who are struggling to find a way to fully appreciate that they, too, have survived. I believe that, through your willingness to share, you have passed the strings of that kite to someone who needed to hold them and consider that someday they, too, may be able to set those strings free. It’s more easily imagined and done when the strings can be pictured.
I always used to picture myself throwing my boxed-up struggles off the back of a ship. They’d dissolve in the air before they could eve