KITE (a memoir short)
When I’m flat on my back, I hope to feel like I did
It’s hard to accept just how much I’ve forgotten. How much I CHOSE to forget. How much I had to forget if I wanted to survive.
But memories, like emotions, don’t exist independently. They’re as interwoven as the different parts of our bodies are to our consciousness and sense of self.
Brene Brown, famed expert and social science researcher on shame and vulnerability, noted that if you numb one emotion, you numb all of them. There’s simply no way to kill our connection to sadness without also destroying our connection to joy.
In the same way…the memories I needed to forget took with them those that could have been left behind. I worried for decades that I’d never get them back.
But here they are. One at a time.
ALL YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO LEAVE BEHIND
When you read this story, please listen to “Kite” by U2
I found this old picture of myself (bottom left) from when I was ten years old. I hadn’t yet gone to the second hospital. The one I didn’t leave for years.
Most of what I remember from that time is as painful as the need to forget.
But when I look at this picture, I remember that there was more to my childhood. I remember a time when I felt the wind against my face, the insistent tug from my kite’s string, and the certainty that if I leapt, my tiny body would be carried away with it.
KITE by Stephenie Magister
Winnie went into the brown grass to fly a kite. The wind was SO STRONG that this little kite threatened to pull her off the ground!!! She could hold on and dig her feet in, but gravity could only do so much when she had just gotten out of the hospital AGAIN and was barely worthy of being called skinny.
She lost hold of the kite string for just a second…
The spool of string flew out of her hand and into the grass…
The kite, tugged by the wind, raced ahead of her…
She LEAPT and practically FLEW after it —
She grabbed the string before it could fully unspool and cost her the kite forever —
BUT THE STRING CONTINUED TO RACE AWAY FROM HER —
SHE TRIED TO HOLD ON TO THE STRING AND HER FINGERS TURNED TO FIRE —
The string unspooled so quickly that it sliced through her hand like she was butter and the string was a hot knife. She let go before it could do more damage.
No. NO. NO!
But then she saw it. The moment when action would save her and hesitation would lose everything.
The string had slowed just enough for her to stomp her foot and catch it —
—
—
But that’s where I can’t figure out what happened next.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
Yes yes yes she was hurt, but she had done it!
That’s what I wrote the first time I got to the end of this. Caught up in the frenzy of memory and the warm embrace of something GOOD I’d long forgotten, I took things too far.
I went back to the Void. That’s where I receive and tell stories, the place in my imagination where it’s easy to wander, chart, and navigate a narrative as you would a theme park. Where it’s as easy for me to move one piece and then live that experience as literally as most people experience anything else. Not every configuration is appealing, but any configuration is possible.
I wanted a good experience, so I imagined one.
But what REALLY happened next?
I want to believe that when it MATTERED, I reached to save the thing I cared about.
I want to believe that I caught the string. I stomped my foot, kept it in place, and took it back in my rope-burned hand.
But when have I ever done that?
WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN NEXT
I went to the hospitals after that. First one, then another, and when I got out of those, I lived in the one I carried with me.
If I ever had the urge to rush forward into action, I lost it soon after.
But just as I begin to doubt whether I’ll ever be able to fly as free as a kite, something else comes back with the feelings. Something else comes back with the memories.
It isn’t just a memory. It’s more than that. More than a fact anyone could tell me about the world.
More than a fact anyone could tell me about myself.
WHO’S TO SAY WHERE THE WIND WILL TAKE YOU?
Something is about to give I can feel it coming I think I know what it means I’m not afraid to die I’m not afraid to live And when I’m flat on my back I hope to feel like I did
Songwriters: U2 (Clayton Adam / Evans David / Mullen Laurence / Hewson Paul David)
Kite lyrics © Polygram Int. Music Publishing B.v.
This happened just a few years ago, but memory is a funny thing. You forgot one thing, you lose something else with it.
But when the wind brings back one thing, if you have the courage to jump, you may be able to grab it.
While I lived in Colorado, I knew not to take my small dog Sydney into dangerous areas. She’s a tiny thing. Vulnerable through no fault of her own.
She looks like a Chihuahua, and as much as I’ll secretly swear she’s got to have at least 1% in her, genetic testing (all hail our lord and savior #SCIENCE) says she’s mostly a Petite Griffon.
I know that because the company who tested her DNA got me to pay my money by insisting that when it comes to dogs, looks can be deceiving. As a woman with transgender experiences, let me tell you, I felt that phrase right in my surgical certainties.
If you ask me, she’s got to be a Chussel. That’s a mix of a Brussells Griffin and, yep, a Chihuahua. Science can only take you so far.
WHAT I KNOW TO BE TRUE
Sydney has been with me through more than anyone else.
When it comes to her breed, her genetics, the label anyone would give her and maybe even that she deserves — what matters most to me is that she’s my friend.
I’d say as much as any dog could be, but I’d say the same about a human. Some are better friends than others. Most are the best friends they’re able to be.
I adopted her outside an Office Max and a local cafe. The rescue league had her with several other dogs in thinly-gated areas on the sidewalk.
I’d planned on looking for a dog over the next six weeks, but as soon as I saw her, I knew I’d spend the next six weeks looking for a dog just like her.
And years later, when I let her take a few steps away from me to pee on the rocks — only for me to see a coyote a mere Lion King’s pace from her — I knew the laws of physics didn’t apply to me.
If the only way to save her was to take flight, then with a single leap, I would learn how to fly.
I KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT GOODBYE
And hardness, it sets in You need some protection The thinner the skin
Songwriters: U2 (Clayton Adam / Evans David / Mullen Laurence / Hewson Paul David)
Kite lyrics © Polygram Int. Music Publishing B.v.
When I took Sydney outside that night, I let her walk a few steps off leash to pee in the snow downstairs — only then for me to see a coyote come around the corner.
There were coyotes close by despite the density of people. The density was, in a sense, why the coyotes couldn’t help it. The city built on top of the coyotes’ homes and left them nowhere else to go. And just a couple of months ago, a coyote had eaten my downstairs neighbor’s Chihuahua.
Losing Sydney would be worse than losing a kite. This was my best friend. My fur baby. Until I knew what it was like to have a human daughter, she was the closest I had to family.
My instincts took over. I literally growled like a wild animal and dove like a baseball player to scoop up Sydney, then went into a fighting stance.
Have you seen that Liam Neeson movie The Grey? Remember the trailer that shows him facing off against a monstrous wolf?
If Liam had seen my eyes, he’d have seen the same thing that coyote saw.
One of us was going down.
Then I saw the truth. It was a big dopey German Shepherd, and its owner was watching me with equal amounts wonder and hilarity.
THE END
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