From the Wilds She Has Returned

Judging from all the posts and comments, things have gone well in my absence. David: you rock. Smooch!! Thank you for your honesty, your humor – and your beautiful little tribute to me, and my roller-skating 16-year-old self!

I have one anecdote from my beautiful (and almost incessantly rainy) vacation that I want to share. I’ll share more … but this one is most definitely a keeper.

We bought a kite. And on one beautiful day, in between rainstorms, my sisters, brother and I, along with Pat, my sister Jean’s boyfriend, Hudson (the dog), and Cashel, went to a huge athletic field to mess around, let the dog run free, and fly the kite.

The grass was thick and cushy. Mountains rose in the distance. The trees were wet, and dark. There was a big high wind.

We began to fly the kite. To glorious success. Taking turns. Running up and down the field. Laughing hysterically at the sight of one of us, getting smaller and smaller and smaller, with the kite billowing high above.

Cashel, who is pretty much uninterested in anything physical (unless it has to do with creating a pretend world and having pretend laser battles), wasn’t into the kite at first. He was primarily into running about, on his own, in his own private idaho, and making loud explosion noises randomly. This was the soundtrack of our rainy house-bound week. Cashel’s exploding Death Star noises.

But – through some miracle – where the planets aligned – and everything clicked into place – Cashel agreed to fly the kite.

Brendan and Pat gave him a quick tutorial, and then off Cashel went, running down the field, holding onto the kite string. We all were screaming and clapping and cheering him on. It was the cutest sight you have ever seen. This small blonde boy, running as fast as he could, occasionally glancing up at the kite – the kite that HE was in charge of. HE was responsible for it, billowing high up in the white sky.

And then, like all ecstatic moments, it had to end.

The kite dive-bombed into the grass, and we all were clapping at Cashel’s tremendous success.

It was so funny, too, to see him RUN. And not run in order to escape from the imaginary jet fighters swooping around his head, but to run in an athletic way. There’s a huge difference.

We all were very proud.

Cashel let Brendan take the kite string from him – I think he was still kind of flying high from the experience – and then Cashel announced, loudly, and emphatically:

“I just had the experience of a lifetime flying that thing!!”

Of course you can’t burst into laughter when a 6 year old says something like that, when a 6 year old, a person who has been on the planet for only SIX YEARS, raves about the “experience of a lifetime”.

But my heart cracked into just about a million pieces! The way he said it!! And he was completely serious, completely sincere.

What I love about Cashel is he says stuff like that OUT LOUD. Because otherwise you would never know what was really going on with him. He had the “experience of a lifetime flying that thing”.

Of course, once you have the “experience of a lifetime”, and you recognize it as such, you are bound to crash into heartache soon after. Which is just what happened. Within 10 minutes, Cashel got all tantrum-y, and weepy, and wanted to “be alone”. I said to him, “Are you in a bad mood right now?” and he screamed at me, “I’LL RECOVER, Auntie Sheila, I’ll RECOVER, I’m just in a bad mood RIGHT NOW.” Assuring me that the storm would pass, and he just needed some time to come down from that ultimate high.

It was a big day. A very big day for the Cashel boy. An experience of a lifetime was had. You can’t just take these things lightly. If you fly a kite and have some kind of revelation of transcendent joy, then I think you are entitled to have a little bit of a bad mood afterwards, because perhaps you realize that life may not ever be so sweet and pure again.

And yes. Cashel did “recover”, in about 20 minutes, from his epochal experience.

We got pictures of him running along, looking back up at the kite, too. The cutest and most exhilarating pictures ever.