Let's go fly a kite!

For a long time, language has been a barrier between me and my grandfather. He never learned more than a few words of English and I’ve always had issues with the fluency of my Spanish. We always found ways to joke with each other but even once language was surmounted, his own conservativeness and general kookiness has made it difficult to connect with him. I had all but given up on having any sort of connection with him, but today he taught me how to make a kite.

My grandfather is 89 years old. Like my father and like me, his entire life he’s been very good at working with his hands. As a young man, he used to work on cars. Now, he fiddles with and fixes watches. My dad has always told me about how he and his brother always had the coolest kites growing up, all made by my grandfather. In particular, he always told me about this one kite his father made that looked like an aircraft carrier ship. When I was little he used to make birdhouses and doll houses for me out of milk cartons. Thus, when he suffered from a stroke about five years ago and lost much of the use of his left arm, my grandfather fell into a somewhat deep depression. In his stubbornness, he refused physical therapy and now has virtually no mobility in his left hand.

Having lived in the kite capital of Britain for the past five months, (I even got to make one), the image of an aircraft carrier in the sky has been gleaming in my mind. Today, when I asked him how to make the ship kite, I wasn’t sure if he’d remember exactly how to make it. More so, I knew it would really excite him that I was interested and that it would give his mind something to keep busy on. Imagine my surprise when he remembered every detail of the kite’s construction. He even proceeded folding and drawing on paper to make a miniature model. I helped with some of the folding and cutting, but mostly it was him. He said that the construction of the kite is too complicated to show on paper, so he has it in his mind to make a scale model of it. He’s happier now that he has a project and something to occupy his mind but more than anything, I’m glad we finally have a connection.