Sarah Mitchell
Aunt · Submitted March 14, 2024
It was one of those rare Saturday mornings in early spring when the Texas sky looked like it had been scrubbed clean overnight and left out to dry. The air had that particular sweetness that only comes after weeks of gray weather — crisp and hopeful and smelling faintly of cedar from the hills. Levi noticed it the moment he stepped outside.
"Aunt Sarah," he said, pulling on my sleeve before I'd even had my coffee, "today is a kite day." He said it with such certainty, the way only seven-year-olds can declare something, as if the wind had personally delivered him a memo.
I had a list of errands a mile long. I was going to say no — that comfortable adult word we deploy so easily against joy. But something in his face stopped me. He was already holding the kite box we'd bought together at the dollar store the previous fall and never gotten around to flying. He'd saved it in his closet all those months, waiting for the right day. Somehow he knew this was it.
"He was already holding the kite box we'd bought together at the dollar store the previous fall and never gotten around to flying. He'd saved it all those months, waiting for the right day."
We drove out to the greenbelt along Barton Creek with the windows down. Levi held the kite box on his lap the whole way, studying the directions as seriously as if they were ancient scripture. He read each step out loud — "Step one: unfold the kite frame along the center spine" — mispronouncing 'spine' as 'speen' and refusing to be corrected because he was absolutely certain he was right.
When we reached the wide open stretch of field near the creek, he was out of the car before I'd even turned off the engine. I watched him stand in the middle of the grass, arms stretched wide, his face turned up to the sky with his eyes closed, feeling for the wind. A moment later he opened his eyes, looked at me, and pointed decisively: "That direction."
He was right, of course. He was often right about things like that — the small invisible things that matter. Which direction the wind was coming from. Which stranger in a waiting room needed someone to smile at them. Which song his grandmother needed to hear when she was sad.
We spent two hours on that field. The kite — a simple red diamond with a long tail of yellow ribbons — kept crashing in those spectacular, flailing ways that kites do when they're just learning to fly. Levi would run after it, pick it up, and assess the damage with the gravity of a small engineer. He'd make adjustments I didn't fully understand, straightening a strut here, shortening the tail there, and then he'd say, "Okay. Again."
And again. And again. Until finally — finally — the wind caught it just right. The kite lifted cleanly off the grass and climbed, climbing, climbing until the string went taut in his hands and he let out a sound I can only describe as pure. Not a word. Not a name. Just a sound that came from somewhere deep and unguarded in him.
We flew that kite for another hour. He let me hold the spool for a little while, but he never entirely let go of the string himself — just wrapped his small hand around mine and we held it together. The creek murmured below us. A pair of mockingbirds chased each other through the live oaks along the bank. The sun moved slowly across the sky the way it does when time is being generous.
On the drive home, he fell asleep with his head against the window. The kite box was tucked at his feet. I drove slowly, not wanting to wake him, not wanting the day to end.
I think about that morning all the time now. About what it means that he knew exactly when to fly the kite — not just which direction the wind was coming from, but that this particular morning in this particular spring was the one. That some days are worth saving things for.
Levi knew that. He always knew that. He had this extraordinary gift for being exactly where he was, exactly when he was there. No other place, no other time. Just here, and now, and: today is a kite day.
I still have the kite. It's in my closet now. I'm waiting for the right day to fly it again. I think I'll know it when it comes — it'll be one of those mornings when the air has been scrubbed clean and smells of cedar and something in me will just know.