I attempted to fly a home-made cloth kite yesterday.

Cheryl and I are vacationing at Amelia Island, Florida this week and I had decided to mark the occasion by constructing a green-and-white “Block S” kite in honor of our alma mater Michigan State University. (A previous vacation trip to Michigan’s Mackinac Island had turned up kites for other Big Ten powerhouses but not for MSU and I was determined to remedy the oversight …)

Our kite didn’t fly very well. Even in a stiff breeze it merely floated above the ground for a few moments before laying down on the job.

“Not enough lift for the weight!” I reasoned.

The kite’s edges were cut on the bias and had stretched a bit when we stitched the hems on Cheryl’s sewing machine. They were loose and floppy and curled backward in the wind. What should have been a crisp diamond  had more the shape of a lumpy cross.

“Design flaw” was my conclusion.

And abruptly I was reminded of a kite flying contest I’d entered when I was about nine years old. My vision had been of a beautiful kite decorated like a stained glass window.

• I’d carefully assembled a diamond-shaped frame of crossed sticks with string connecting the four ends.
• Then I’d cut tissue paper one inch bigger than the frame on all sides and folded and glued each paper edge over the string.
• I remember laying out a geometric design of triangle shapes separated by thick black lines and painting the triangles with vivid water colors.
• Finally I’d rigged the kite with a bow string, bridle string and tail and taken it outside for a test flight.

It flew! I can still see it going up and up and over the roof of our house! And I can still feel the lurch of anguish as the string broke and my beautiful kite disappeared over neighboring rooftops!

I ran through the neighborhood looking for it but never found it. My mom and dad encouraged me to build another and I did.

Disaster struck again as Dad and I were just starting to launch my kite the day of the contest. One of the sticks suddenly snapped. Dad splinted the fracture and we tried again. We eventually got it up in the air, but it was unbalanced and didn’t fly very well.

I was pretty discouraged.

So you can imagine my surprise – and my joy – when I won a prize for Most Beautiful Kite!