On Saturday afternoons, when chores were done, the nearby desert came alive with squeals, thudding feet, and grunts of effort. My imagination would soar with each puff of air that took the kite higher and higher into the sky, making my arm muscles ache and shake.

"Need help?" my dad would ask, closing his big hand around mine, easing the strain from the pulling of the kite string.

As I pulled hard against the tug of the flying kite, we both fought with gravity. My body was leaning back so far, that my long hair scraped the desert sand. When my dad pointed that out to me, I instantly thought of bugs and spiders and jerked forward, nearly losing the kite and instantly losing my footing, landing face down in the dry dust. My hand still held the kite string but it was on its way down with wiggles left and right as it descended.

I tried to scream but it came out muffled. I hated the dirt all over me, yet hated to lose the kite more, so I rolled over onto my back just as a puff of desert wind grabbed the kite and took it upward with a strong pull. My dad was laughing so hard he was bouncing in a soundless rhythm of shakes. Nothing could make me laugh as fast or as deep, as my dad's silent hysteria. When he laughed that hard, he was lost in a breathless world that sucked in the innocent bystanders all around. Startled strangers would be giggling in seconds. In this case that included lizards, snakes and what ever else was lurking behind the cactus.

In fear of losing kite, breath, and life and limb if it sucked me up with it, I jumped to my feet and thrust the kite handle in dad's limp hands. Somehow, he stopped laughing long enough to stablize the kite. We both were dirty and happy.

Getting a kite up in the sky is some of the hardest work I did as a child. The thrill of flight was always worth it and never the same.

Dad let out the string, giving the kite new height, and I sighed with pleasure as it became a mere dot in the sky. We bought cheap kites, because part of the fun, was next on the day's agenda.

"What do ya think?" Dad looked at me and winked. "Should we?"

"Ok, but we have to make a wish." My nine-year old faith owned many wishes.

"One to share, or one to keep?" Dad waited.

"Let's do both." Decisions were as hard for me then as now. Our shared wish took a few minutes to create. We came up with "Happiness for the family" and my silent one was that my cat would not kill my bird. She stalked him constantly and I loved them both.

On the count of 1, 2, 3, dad pulled the kite in close as he could without it falling to the ground, and cut the string. Up, Up, and away. It was an exhilirating moment, if you were 9 or 42..

What has happened to the art of family kite flying on a breezy weekend afternoon? Play together, stay together.

Flying a kite on a warm summer day seemed of little importance, but we did it most Saturdays and sometimes with disastrous outcomes. Most kites bit the dirt. Cactus got in the way, hair was mussed and patience lost. The echoes of those days tell me that friendship grows in the art of flying a kite. I hear encouragement in the wind's whispers of "try again." I see laughter in goals reached, even smiles of understanding in defeat. I listen to the thunder of grunts, groans, and the scraping of gritted teeth as the kite climbs. I feel the slowness of time passing on lazy afternoons, and the rush of excitement of the escaped kite; freedom that is young and dangerous. I pass abandoned kites wrapped around wires with stories to tell.

This past Saturday, 2 days after my wedding anniversary, I was dancing around in the past. I stepped outside the front door, and was startled by a sudden rise of a big red hot air balloon. It's a hobby of many here in the Tampa Bay rural areas, and their appearance seems magical and always mesmerizing. Suddenly, I was back in the New Mexico desert, flying kites and saddened by an enormous pain of days gone.

I am both scared and delighted by hot air balloons. The basket that holds life in its fragility is a wonder. The person who steps in perhaps crazy. I wish it were me.

Flying high above trials, troubles, and tempers, better left behind in the dust and cement of earth and city. Even for short moments or hours, it is an escape that gives birth to insight and understanding. Or, so I'm told and I believe.

Oh, go fly a kite...