I can do ponytails, but my braids are painful and sloppy.
I have two daughters whom I love and adore more than it is possible to describe. Sometimes I can pass as a parent. Sometimes my efforts are like my braids.
The day started like any other Sunday. Wake up, watch TV, Fruity Pebbles. “What are we going to do today?” they ask. “Go to church,” I respond. Whine, complain, relent. Get dressed, change clothes, brush teeth. Change clothes. Change clothes. Change clothes.
It was a blustery day. Cloudy, slight drizzles, windy. The sermon came from a chapter commonly referred to as the “Hall of Faith,” wherein every sentence begins with “By faith . . . ” and goes on to describe the amazing things a procession of biblical figures did by simply living through faith. In other words, people that threw off the bell curve for the rest of us.
The topic was Moses’ parents, and how their faith in just the first few months of his life established a stronghold in him.
The Bible is a little fuzzy about what else this guy Moses did with the rest of his life.
The clouds blew away that afternoon, and the sky was blue as blue can be. The perfect day to fly a kite. The girls were overjoyed at the thought. We packed up a cooler full of drinks and snacks and headed out with visions of this being a benchmark moment for happiness in our lives.
Years later they would recall it in dreamlike tones, thanking me in their acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Aerodynamics, “It all started that day my dad took me to fly a kite . . . ”
We bought our kites (Tinker Bell, an owl and a World War II fighter plane — guess which was mine) and went to the wide open field at Robert Gross Park. They played on the jungle gym while I assembled the kites. As usually happens when a boy tackles a project to build or destroy something, I was engrossed. So much so that I paid no attention to the clouds moving in.
The Tinker Bell kite was built and off went the 5-year-old, running and screaming with joy. I assembled the owl and off went the 7-year-old, equally happy. Our perfect family moment was taking flight.
