Out Of Sight

Kite flying over marsh on Hoffman Road
Kite flying over marsh on Hoffman Road

We bought some duck eggs at the Public Market yesterday but I didn’t have the guts to to try one this morning. Instead I had a large chicken egg that we bought at Wegmans, one with a stamp on it that says “Use by June 9.” The organic duck eggs from Shannon Brook Farms are in a reused box that still reads “Best If Used By April 22.” The duck eggs are supposed to be creamier and that contain more protein.

Maureen bought me a kite for my birthday. She teaches fourth graders and called with her kids on the line. When I answered they sang Happy Birthday to me. Now that’s a gift! She brought the kite to painting class and I groaned when she gave it me. It was nice and everything but I don’t like the whole idea. There’s so much junk in the world I’m neurotic about the whole gift-giving thing. That said, what a cool gift.

We took it down to the marsh on Hoffman Road. Most of the trees down there have died from too much water so there is a good patch of open sky. We held it out and it took off. There may have been too much wind today because it crashed a few times. I remember adding cloth knots to kites’ tails back when we were kids in an effort to keep the thing oriented right and that may have helped. With today’s gusts we were never able to get the whole roll of string unwound before the kite would nosedive to the ground. We used to get those old paper kites up to the end of a roll of string, tie the kite to a tree and ride down to Bowmans to buy more string, ride back and put that thing up out of sight.

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