IT was a week after the funeral. She had buried her hard working accountant husband, who had painstakingly worked from morn till sundown, risen from clerk to bank manager, sent two children to college and jobs abroad with the income, and given her a comfortable life style.
It was a week after the funeral, as she rummaged in his cupboard, looking for documents and files he had meticulously kept, and it was then that she saw the secret compartment. She opened it trembling, she did not want to know any secret about her husband, she did not want to find anything that would disturb memories of the solid, dependable, hardworking man he’d been.
But she opened the compartment. She felt something light and papery to the touch, then slowly, carefully pulled out, not one, not two but a dozen kites. They were fresh as if just bought from the kite shop down the road, and she wept as she saw them. “One day,” he’d told her, “I’ll have time to fly kites on the terrace!”
“You seem to have flown them before?” she’d said. “I loved them when little,” he’d said, “I loved the feel of the kite in the heavens rising up and reigning like a king!” “Why don’t you do so this Sunday?” she’d asked. “Overtime!” he’d said, “But maybe next Sunday or the holiday that comes after that!”
She wept as she felt the crisp paper. She wept as the kites spoke a dream of a dead man, who’d wanted the simple pleasure of flying them, up in the sky. Her sons came home the next day. They saw the kites fixed on the sitting room wall, “Ma,” they protested, “This is not the time to celebrate, this is a time of mourning!”
“Yes,” she said, “I know it is, and that is why I’ve put them there!” They felt the paper, they stared at the lovely designs and they listened to their mother as she told them where she’d found them. They had tears in their eyes, as they thought of their dad, and the kites he’d never flown.
“Ma, I’d like to take one home!” said her eldest. “And I want one for my home too,” exclaimed the second. She gave the kites to them, and her heart gladdened as they called her the next week, “We’re picking you up mother, we’re going to spend the weekend camping!” “Camping?” she asked, “I’ve never camped before!” “Nor have we, but that’s the kite we want to fly mother.
Come along!” She smiled as they drove down the mountain track, she looked at the car of her second son behind, and as she looked out of the window, she felt she could see her husband, laughing as he flew a kite, higher and higher into the wind, reigning like a king. His sad kites in the cupboard had made his son’s fly theirs. What about you my friend, are your kites going to be found in your cupboard, or do they fly in the sky? Go fly a kite..!
