Musings, Kites, and Griswald Moments

I woke up early and decided this would be a good day to walk the beach down to the pier.  Taking my my cup of coffee with me, I left behind a mostly sleeping household and moved across the road and down the shore.  Finishing my coffee while I contemplated the grey clouds obscuring the sunrise, I stowed the empty cup along a sand fence to pick up on my way back.  Finally I make it up in time to see the sunrise and I pick a day when it will be totally hidden behind clouds.  It was still worth it though. The waves breaking close to the shore projected the same violence as always, fascinating me with the knowledge they’d been doing this same thing for thousands of years.  Both soothing and terrifying, they mesmerized me; so beautiful and so deadly.

I headed to the pier off in the distance, passing by houses we'd rented in the past.  We’ve had to find bigger places to fill the needs of our growing family but there are so many memories here, jogged in my mind as I walked along. The first time I came alone, joining friends from Virginia.  Then Paul and the kids came with me.  Now it’s our children and their children and several friends as well. 

I passed one house that we stayed in during a dark time in our lives.  Seeing it brought back some of the hard years we’ve been through and I thanked God for rescuing my son and daughter from potentially tragic influences in their lives.  I passed another and remembered how He had saved me as well from making critical, life-altering decisions.  How much our lives can change with seemingly insignificant choices! I thought about how small my circle was the first few times I came here and how it has expanded with the passage of time.  I felt overwhelmed with gratitude at how God's hand has been evident in good times and bad; He's always there but only as present as we permit Him to be.

I came back to the house wondering why I don't rise early every day for some introspection and reflection.  Maybe it's a habit I should start.

As a child, my attempts at kite-flying met with no success. Fortunately, the aerodynamics in kite design have vastly improved from those available back in the stone age when I was a kid.  And the wind that is usually present on the Atlantic seaboard is much more conducive to liftoff than the faint breeze that sometimes touched down on my childhood farm in Ohio.

I had purchased several kites in Kitty Hawk on previous visits to the outer banks and later in the evening I took my favorite, easiest-to-fly kite over to the beach to show the grandkids what it can do.  The stiff breeze immediately did its job and I unwound the string, letting the bright colors snap into the air high above our heads.  The Littles were enthralled and wanted to hold the handle, attached to the string.  I kept a tight hold higher up the line while they clung tightly to the plastic at the end.  Handing the whole works over to my son-in-law I watched as he handed the line to his two-year-old son.

“I’d hang on to that!” I called out to him, just as my little grandson let go and the kite seized its freedom, taking off down the beach with my son-in-law, Jim, racing along behind. Fortunately, without the tension on the line, the kite swooped toward the ground, inland, away from the water.  After he retrieved it we soon had it aloft again, this time with an adult keeping it in hand.

My daughter Jaimee’ is the photographer in the family.  She possesses an actual camera and a knack for good staging with our often uncooperative bunch. One especially humid and overcast evening, before sundown, she herded us all to the beach for a family photo. Grouping us all together she had one of our friends on hand to snap the shots that would hopefully end up on our Christmas card come holiday time.

It all went fine until she tried to get the individual family shots and then things went rapidly downhill.  It was so humid her camera steamed up, showing shadowy shapes in a cloud of grey.  While this may have hidden our flaws quite nicely, it did make us rather hard to identify.  We resorted back to rapid firing with our phones, trying to beat the deterioration of the Littles.  In short order we all went from smiles and cooperation to rebellion and chaos in the ranks; what started out Hallmark ended decidedly Griswald.  I sometimes wonder if we are more of a mess than other families or just not as successful at hiding it.