Oh my Bellamarie - well I need to ground myself and feel adequate than - and with that, a story that were my life guide experiences that I had only more fully tapped back into in the last few years.
Some backstory... Unlike several of you, I grew up in 3 different places, spread far from each other - As a very young child it was Tampa Florida. Only a few memories - I do remember being angry with my grandmother - I was 2, before my sister was born and Mama had me sitting on the shelf outside the big kitchen window so that my hair would dry in the sun - Grandma comes in angry and scolding my mother - of course in those years all in German, which alone sounds like the clouds have opened and all this sound is emanating from some hidden doomsday God - the gist of it was, "she could fall", including all these expletives about my mother being either crazy or dumb in the head - if I was a bit scared, no more - would not give in or agree with anyone scolding my mother.
Then White County Ga. where there was lots of mud to play with and in and there was a lot of singing - both my mother and my Aunt played the piano and my Uncle played the Violin and an older cousin the accordion - music all the time.
Then much of my grade school years was in a Throgs Neck when it was all dirt or gravel roads, with fields of tall grass as far as the eye could see. A scattering of homes, a long, unpaved street with various shops and where the end of the line for the Trolley car was located that connected us to the city. Then in seventh grade we moved to City Island, an old 1647 seafaring community, where huge wooden boats were still handmade in several of the boat yards, there was a sail loft that made huge sails including the sails for the world famous America’s Cup yachts, lots of fishermen and lobster men and older folks dug clams - Three churches, with the Catholic Church having all of 14 pews. The grade school had 4 classes, with two classes sharing the same room and same teacher - High School was a daily, hour and a half bus trip into the city - lots of homework completed, books read and socks knitted on that twice a day trip.
Both places have changed dramatically since my childhood - still no High School on City Island but no longer a seafaring community - both areas are busy, full of houses, paved roads, shops, restaurants and lots of traffic. The same in Tampa with only White County remaining rural although, it too has paved roads and other amenities. However, the White County relatives all moved to various locations in North Carolina and most of the Tampa relatives are now in Ocala. After I married I lived 4 years on a small farm near Wappingers Falls NY and then back south, living over a dozen years in Kentucky and 51 years here in Austin.
Each place I lived had an impact on my life - mostly because of the opportunities each area offered - and now, after all that, the story of how I experienced feeling adequate to the task of living when the living is filled with the unexpected.
The Summer when I was about 7 my father made me a kite - we raided mom's rag bag for pieces of cloth to make the tail and he had a ball of string that he showed me how to wind like a figure 8 on a wooden stick - up our gravel street was the cross street that dropped off into a steep dirt hill that lead to the swamp and the top of the hill was at the end of our street - kids would fly their kite from that hill top - my father got me started - my sister, who is 2 and half years younger tagged along, watched but quickly lost interest –
I loved it - I could feel the pull of the wind and how my pulling against the wind was flying this kite – The other kids had store bought kites of wonderful colors - cost 10 cents that we just did not have - saved all winter and by the next Spring I purchased my kite - I chose a yellow one - then I asked my father if he could get any more string - I remember the smile he had when he came home with a large ball of string that we added with a special knot - I thought my kite could reach the clouds - One day a huge blimp from Germany came over and the people waved - I knew they could see my kite - this had to be the summer before the war when I was 8 – I turned 9 a month after the war started.
I remember holding tight that kite string, feeling the wind shifts and having to work when the wind dropped, pumping the string to keep the kite in the air - on and on I learned how to work with the wind - it was finally the third year of kite flying that the girl across the street joined us and my sister also tried but she could not keep her kite in the air and so she went back home. Chicky, the girl across the street did not like the silence - she kept trying to talk with the boys who were intent on flying their kite and not interested - nor did she like working the kite with the wind - so there I was again, the only girl among 5 or 6 boys spread across the top of that hill as we, from time to time made short comments for all to hear about what the wind was doing.
When I was a teen I loved sailing - there were sailboats of all sizes around the island and I loved not only sailing, I loved sanding down and varnishing the hauls each spring and re-splicing ropes and polishing the brass just as much as sailing the boats.
Pat Cranna, my best friend and I would climb aboard the large two and three mast sailboats that were waiting for repairs and climb the tallest mast to dive off making sure we cleared the deck - sometimes we were so high we were scared but did it anyhow. As girls, we were not allowed to join the long sail down the coast as most of the teen boys took those large yachts down to Florida each year in late Summer and came back by train - but we did get to experience the joy of cutting through the water, using the wind and knowing how to close haul (pull-in) or reach (let loose the sails) to get the most from the wind - I loved hauling tight the sail, catching the wind as close as possible so that we had to hang off the other side to keep the boat from tipping - no noise like a motor boat and clean cutting with a slicing feeling of moving along the water, watching the tiny directional streamers attached to the top of the mast - I loved it.
Later, as a responsible adult and Mom, I felt more like a serving tray than flying a kite or sailing - yes, I filled high my serving tray with lots of goodies to please and colorfully decorated everything on my serving tray and yes, I will always instinctively take care of others however, not realizing it, there was always a tiny piece of me, flying my kite or sailing my boat, reading the wind as I did at 7, standing on that hill, flying my kite watching for a change in the wind and learning from a few of the older, more experienced kite flyers what to do, when and why.
And so, the wind has changed again. Now I'm an elder in a town that has multiplied 3 to 4 times the size it was in 1966 when we chose this lot, that was then located on the edge of town and my children and grandchildren have since scattered. Over the years, my life has been calm to full of storms with a couple of tornadoes - during it all I kept my kite flying and sailed without cracking up or crashing on the rocks, even kept my serving tray afloat and so, I'm ready, let's see how the wind is blowing for the characters in Kristin Hannah's story.
