Release the String...

"Release the string gradually."

That's the next to the last instruction for flying a kite.

My first kite, a store bought model with a tail made out of a strip of my mother's worn sheet, never flew higher than an elm tree before it tangled itself up in limbs.

"That", said my cousin Bobby, "is a kite eating tree."

When you're eight and your older more worldly cousin is ten, you take her words seriously.

"Why didn't you tell me?"
" You wouldn't have believed me."

I once flew a handmade Delta kite on Wingaersheek Beach where low tide is truly low and the shallow water goes on and on stretching itself to the horizon. That kite flew high and out over the water.

I released the string gradually until the wind picked up and the spool turned on its own letting out all my cord—every inch of cord—and the kite still tugged. Like Icarus the kite ignored my tugs and flew toward the sun. Like Icarus the kite kept climbing, now vertically, until the string snapped and the kite spun out of control and dove into a calm blue sea.

"Kite eating sea." I murmured to myself.