Question Yourself

I had the great good fortune to grow up in what aging generations call "a simpler time." Part of this simpler time existed in the convention of schoolchildren being allowed to safely walk home from the bus stop without concern of kidnapping or injury. This practice was a defining part of my life, though it would take me several years to realize it.

I grew up in a small canyon where the daily operating procedure of the bus driver was to drop the children off at the mouth of the canyon and wait to ensure that they all made it across the train tracks safely before she drove away. Parents usually lined their cars up along the side of the main road to wait for their children and pick up carpools. Most of the time parents would offer rides to stragglers even if the vehicles were full, but even then it was certainly not uncommon for more than a dozen children to be left to walk home unaccompanied. As one of the families who lived nearer the mouth of the canyon, my siblings and I were more often than not some of the walkers.

There were many aspects of the trek home that deeply influenced my life: the love I gained for mountain air, the joy of solitude, the appreciation for the beauty of autumn. But the single longest-lasting impact from the hundreds if not thousands of times I walked home was destined, strangely enough, to be a mathematical calculation.

I never knew the measurement of the distance from the bus stop to my driveway, but lengthy experience taught me that the range could be traversed in thirty minutes, give or take a few. A brisk walk could bring you home in as few as twenty, but rarely were we undertaking to hurry home to chores. This time lapse remained more or less constant over the years from first grade through high school, when, even after I transferred schools and my mother shuttled us home from a different city, we were nearly always deposited at the mouth of the canyon and told to walk home. I'm sure it was the most peaceful half hour my mother got to enjoy all day.

I was seven when I first asked my mother how long the road was that we traipsed every day. Let me spare a moment here to say that I had implicit faith in my mother for years. She was a former teacher and had the habit of answering us honestly except for when she answered us sardonically, a practice I had not yet learned to recognize. So when I asked her how long the road was, I believed her entirely when she shrugged and said, "I dunno. Probably a tenth of a mile."

This distance calculation became my sole frame of reference for all distances ever mentioned. It was my only experience with miles. People talked about miles all the time, but it's impossible for a seven-year-old to really picture that. Now I knew. A mile was ten walks home.

The first difficulty I encountered came the following spring when our third-grade teacher started a track and field focus in P.E. She announced that for P.E. that day we were all going to run a mile and a half, which she knew was one and a half times around the school's north field. I thought she was crazy. A mile was ten walks home. Ten of them! One walk home took me half an hour. Now she wants us to run fifteen of them? How long did she think P.E. lasted? Was it even legal for her to make us run for seven hours? The bus leaves in just two!

I began outlining an escape plan all the way to the north field and then stared at it more puzzled than ever. Though the field was certainly large, to circumambulate it one and a half times would certainly not take seven hours. Not unless we walked really, really slow. My explanation for this conundrum was that my teacher had been misinformed about the distance and I should certainly not bring it up to her because who the heck wants to spend the next seven hours marching around this blasted field? Not I. I ran the requisite length in about twenty-five minutes and learned that day that I had a mild form of asthma. See? School teaches you all kinds of things.

That was only the most overt problem I had with understanding distance. I learned at some point that a mile broke down into five thousand two hundred eighty feet. One tenth of that was five hundred twenty-eight feet. It took the average child (see I knew I was average because other children walked home with me and it took us all the same time) thirty minutes to cover five hundred twenty-eight feet. Therefore, per my completely accurate calculations, football fields were either impossible or sports people didn't know what a yard was. My money was on the latter.

I learned about the history of the marathon in fifth grade. People actually run marathons today? What a barbaric tradition! That's twenty-six miles! You know the guy who ran the first marathon died, right? And for good reason! That's two hundred sixty walks home! People were doing that in four hours! How were they not all dead? Running a marathon should have the same population effect as the black plague!

My understanding of miles continued far, far longer than it should have. It was not until I was nineteen and regularly driving myself home that I truly began to question the answer my mother had given me twelve years before. One day I simply reset the odometer as I crossed the tracks and then glanced down at it when I reached home. I stared at it for a minute and walked into the house to find my dad.

"Dad," I said, "you might want to check the odometer on the Toyota. It says the drive home from the tracks is a mile."

Lesson: When it's your mental math versus precise Japanese mechanics, the Japanese win every time. Learn to question yourself.

Everyone's a Critic

I suffer regularly from the delusion that I could, given time and practice, learn to be musically inclined. This has been a lifelong delusion and one which still surfaces from time to time. I'm not terrible with music. I'm just no, say, Lindsey Stirling. This never really bothers me, and to be entirely honest, despite the knowledge that I will most likely never be Lindsey Stirling, Itzhak Perlman, Vivaldi, or anything remotely close to a fantastic musician, I continue trying to learn to play the violin.

Almost everyone who learns that at the prize, young age of twenty-two I decided to take up the study of a string instrument tells me how awesome they think my decision is and tends to be, in conversation, demeanor, and support very encouraging. Almost everyone.

I must preface the revelation of those who are not supportive of my musical endeavors by saying that I do not regularly count my cats as people. Not ever. They are not my "children." They are not replacements for regular human interaction. If I had to abandon my home with my handsome and flee, I would be sad to leave the cats behind, but I would if my life depended on it.

I also do not bother, normally, with what my cats do and do not hate. Don't like the discount cat food? Deal with it. Eat it or starve, buddy. Don't like me squirting you in the face with water? Don't jump on the table and steal my sausages. Don't like Brian showing more attention to me than to you when he gets home? Deal with it. I'm his wife. You're a cat. Go lick yourself.

That being said, my cats hate my violin aspirations. Oddly enough, it took me a little while to fully realize this.

I began, as I said, learning the violin when I was twenty-two, a full year or more before I met Brian and two years before we moved into a condo, he left to Afghanistan, and I picked up three kittens for company. In those two years I practiced regularly, often on campus but frequently at home. The latter situation led me to purchasing a mute to prevent my neighbors from storming my home with pitchforks to break all my fingers and demand the destruction of my fiddle. The mute worked very well in this role. To date I've never had any comments from my neighbors. As far as I'm aware, they may not even know I moved in.

But, for those of you unacquainted with string instruments, a mute does not entirely block the sound that is scraped painstakingly from the bowels of the apparatus. The fiddle still sounds exactly as it would otherwise, just quieter. I'm fine with this, since it means that only I or anyone in the same room with me has to endure the horrible scratching and scraping that makes up my violin practice sessions. Even Brian didn't consider leaving me when he returned from Afghanistan to my daily rite of fiddle noise-making. He did, however, comment one day about three weeks into this routine.

"I don't think the cats like your playing."

He said it very matter-of-factly but chuckled, and initially I thought he was joking. I laughed along but didn't think much more of it and kept playing. A few minutes later, Brian laughed some more and said, "They really don't like your playing."

This merited investigation, so I and my fiddle came into the living room to see what the cats were up to. I had previously sequestered myself in the most isolated part of our rather small condominium to reduce the intrusion of my playing on the rest of the house. Even with the mute, the fiddle being right next to my ear keeps me from hearing a great many things going on elsewhere, and I credit this as the reason I hadn't noticed all three of my cats crowded at the bottom of the stairs near the front door yowling for all they were worth.

There are many unusual points about this situation. First, the three cats do not usually congregate all three of them together in any one location peacefully. The social dynamics between them are imbalanced in such a way that any two will occasionally sleep together but it is truly rare for all three to be assembled in harmony. This made me think that the cats were fighting at the base of the stairs, which is also unusual because the cats only go to the bottom of the stairs for three reasons: to access the litter box, to greet us when we return home, or to escape our vengeful squirts when they misbehave. At this precise moment, none of them were using the litter box, Brian and I were already home, and nobody was being squirted with water. Therefore, the cats should not have been at the bottom of the stairs.

Yet there they were. One, two, three. All by the front door. All looking miserable and crouching as close to the floor as they possibly could. I looked down the stairs and the cats just looked mournfully up at me as though asking me if the time of punishment was over and they could return to good graces. I was puzzled. I asked Brian what made him think they didn't like my playing.

"They all start yowling as soon as you start playing. Then they stop when you stop."

I thought he was making this up. I walked back into the living room and played the passage I had previously been working on. The moment my bow touched the strings, my already inharmonious normal noise was expounded upon with cacophonous howling that echoed sharply up the stairs. I stopped. So did the cats. Brian laughed.

"Maybe," I said, "they just don't like Suzuki music." I put bow to string again and dashed off several bars from a jig I was studying. The yowling resumed punctuated with terrible yelps whenever I reached a particularly high note. I didn't know cats could yelp. Brian laughed more.

"Maybe Christmas music?" I tried an upbeat French traditional carol. The cats communicated categorically their very strong feelings that Jesus's birth should not be heralded by a violin. Ever.

"Maybe something calmer?" I scraped away at the few phrases of Silent Night that I knew. The cats loudly begged for silence now.

"Let's try something I'm really good at." This reduced me to playing several variations of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, the only piece I had practiced enough to be able to play without hesitations, scratches, or squeaks. The cats cried more than ever and began scratching at the front door, as though their fears of the outdoors paled in comparison with the certain doom of remaining indoors with a violin-playing Maile.

Having exhausted my repertoire of pieces, I stood rather amazed in the middle of the living room with my fiddle tucked under my arm. I really found it quite incredible that these three ridiculous creatures could take such vehement objection to my musical efforts. I bet Itzhak Perlman never had to put up with this crap.

My prolonged silence had led the cats to believe that deliverance had come. They crept to the top of the stairs and poked their noses cartoon-like one by one around the corner. It seems that not only had I been practicing routinely enough for them to hate my playing, but they had also learned what detestable object produced the terrible din. Their survey of the scene halted abruptly the moment their eyes landed on the fiddle under my arm. Immediately, their ears flattened and they crouched in anticipation of the fiddle moving from its relatively safe location held firm by my elbow.

I glared at all three of them. In a flash I whipped my fiddle to my chin and dashed off several bars of the jig. They were just as quick as I and bolted, yowling all the way, to the bottom of the stairs before I was two bow strokes in.

I will, however, not be bested by three silly felines. I stood deliberately at the top of the stairs and boldly played every single piece I knew by heart. It was probably my best performance to date. This drove them to take the heretofore unprecedented action of cramming one by one into the litter box, the furthest physical location they could possibly be from the fiddling and a location not designed to accommodate three cats at once. Take that, fuzzy-faced jerks.

Our squirt bottles have gotten considerably less usage since that day. If ever I think the cats are being excessively irritating or deliberately rebellious, I just pull out my fiddle. Minor infractions merit Suzuki. Christmas carols are for excessive conditions. And for particularly irksome days, I keep an Irish jig.

Turns out they're fine with me learning guitar, though.

Down with Toast!

Bad days always started with toast for breakfast. After first being ordered to wake up (and being already awake) by a bossy older sister, then having to wait for the bathroom because one was the second to youngest, and finally making it downstairs after dressing in a cold, dark bedroom, there was nothing worse than discovering that breakfast was toast. Toast + anything = terrible. It's like multiplying by zero. You get zero. Every time.

Toast and peanut butter? Terrible. Toast and scrambled eggs? Terrible. Toast and cream tuna? Terrible. Toast and poached eggs? The most terrible of all terrible things that could ever possibly be terrible. The very worst days of growing up dawned with poached eggs on toast. Whose genius plan was it to cook bread and then slosh a sopping wet slimy egg onto the crispy bread thereby fully negating the action of toasting it? Someone who hates children, I imagine. Probably one of the Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang villains.

Brian and his family disagree with this stance. Brian's loving but curt assessment came out as, "You're crazy." Followed by long, confused stares from him, his mother, his sister, his other sister, and their cat. This summation of my insanity was the termination of an incident I refer to as The Toast Misconception. Brian offered to make everyone omelettes and asked if I would like one since he was making one for everyone else. I knew he was making one for everyone else, having been present when he asked everyone else, but nobody had verified the presence of rice to go with the eggs. Eggs cannot be served without rice, so I asked, "Is there rice?"

Brian: "What?"
Maile: "Is there rice?"
Brian: ". . . "
Maile: *Questioning stare*
Brian: "What?"
Maile: "Rice. Is there rice?"
Brian: "What do you need rice for? I'm asking if you want an omelette."
Maile: "I know. But you need rice for an omelette."
Brian: "What kind of crazy omelettes are you making? I'm putting eggs in the omelettes."
Maile: "I know how omelettes are made. But, what, you just going to eat the omelettes with nothing?"
Brian: "No. We have toast."

The conversation by then had attracted the attention of the family at hand (but not the cat yet) who all paused here to nod along in silent support of Brian. I had to shake my head. This would not stand. Gone were the days of my childhood where I had to suffer through toast being served at a meal because a sibling had failed in the all-important duty of cooking rice. I was twenty-three, by heaven! I no longer wore rice-bowl bangs, and I certainly! no longer ate eggs with toast. Ever.

I carefully explained to Brian that eggs, as a protein, begged a balanced and delicious staple on the side. That side must be rice. Rice is delectable, palate-cleansing, warm, wonderful, fulfilling, and in short everything that a standard egg-accompaniment should be. Toast, by contrast, was terrible.

The words were no sooner out of my mouth but I was bombarded with speculations against my taste, rearing, well-being, and sanity. I held firm then; I continue to hold firm six years later. Eggs with toast is an affront to humanity. Toast has this terrible way of cutting the roof of one's mouth and leaving crumbs everywhere─everywhere! One never eats a bite of toast without having to follow up with a vacuum cleaner. And it's practically impossible to take a bite of eggs and toast at the same time. What is the use of having the toast with the eggs if the only way to consume it is with alternate bites or the ever-hopeful attempt of nipping off a corner of toast and holding it lightly in one's mouth in the hopes that it doesn't get saturated before the forkful of eggs can arrive too?

Toast dries out the whole meal. Why do you think they keep inventing stuff to put on toast? Because it's absolutely no good alone! They sell the bread in stores next to the stuff to put on it to make it better. Whenever people make toast, it's never just toast. Nobody wanting some toast just goes and pulls the toast straight from the toaster and sits down to consume it warmly, comfortably, lovingly all by itself. It is forever slathered in butter, jam, peanut spread, Nutella, cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, salad dressing, anything, anything! to change the texture from that of crusted flour to one more palatable. It's so dry that people have to dream up how to make a meal excessively moist to compensate for the square of compact sand they're serving along with the main course.

People are constantly inconvenienced by the nature of toast without ever giving it much thought. How often has one desisted from enjoying a salad because the crunchy purpose of the toasted bread cubes has been lost in the tossed depths of the lettuce mix? 

Why not just serve rice? Rice is sublime. Subtle and unassuming but surprising. Rice is friendly. It never attacks the inside of your mouth with razor-sharp edges or inflicts wounds down your throat should you accidentally swallow a portion just a little too large. Rice fits nicely and neatly in the tidiest and most artistic of piles in the corner of one's plate without crashing unceremoniously down the slope into the center or requiring quarantine on a separate plate. Rice is mild enough to accompany any flavor of dish but bold enough to carry its own when included as an ingredient. It keeps its texture over time even when swimming in soup or thrown in with fajitas. 

Rice is so remarkable an entire nation estimated a man's wealth in how much rice his arable land could produce. Who ever introduced King Henry V as the master of a thousand bakeries? Nobody. That's who. Just remember. The punishing phrase has always been, "Glass of water, crust of bread." Not, "Glass of water, bowl of rice."

I have embarked on a quest and my quest is this: to enlighten the Western world to the marvel of rice. A rice cooker in every home. Rice as a side in every restaurant. Rice served as the staple in cafeterias. Onigiri as the standard for lunches instead of sandwiches. Rice crackers for snacks. Mochi for desserts. No more burnt toast setting off smoke alarms. No more sad mornings full of drenched bread under waterlogged eggs. And absolutely no strange stares from handsome husbands when an innocent wife queries, "Rice?" There will be no need. Because everyone will know not to offer eggs without rice.

There will likely be resistance, but I'm not doing away with toast altogether. We'll throw bread crumbs at weddings. There will still be plenty of day-old bakery goods to throw to ducks in the park. I'll need operatives to help deal with the toaster-factory hired stooges. Rice-aware nutrition operatives to properly introduce rice to cafeteria menus. Rice-minded marketing operatives to present rice as the next All American main dish. Rice-creative artist operatives to take rice from its fettered repetitive appearance only in sushi bars to the fundamental key in haute cuisine. And a small core of rice-loyal assassins to remove the toast-indoctrinated rabble-rousers. 

Then when I ask Brian to fix breakfast and he smirks and says, "Poached eggs on toast?" I'll just put my finger to my ear and say, "Take 'im down, boys."

Pew!

Forward the Rice Revolution.

Tiny Confession

In 2004 I lied to a couple of friends. There. I've never worried about it or even remembered it except from time to time, and I'm sure they've long since forgotten and certainly don't care, but there's also a lesson to be learned here.

We were hiking in the Yellow Mountains in China when we came to a rest stop in the form of a small landing at the base of one cliff and on the edge of another. I think we were waiting for someone to catch up to us, but in any case four of us stopped on the landing. We were soon joined by three foreigners ─ one female and two males ─ one of whom was very tall and, according to my friends, very good-looking. To be honest, I didn't see it, but I've always had different taste in men.

My friends took up whispering among themselves about how fine this guy looked and so on and so forth and sooner or later one of them dared the other (doesn't this show how young we were?) to talk to him. Before anyone could act on the dare, however, we overheard them speaking and immediately realized they were French, or at least of a French-speaking nation. My friends turned in unison and stared at me.

Let me paint you a little self portrait. I started studying French at the age of 13 and continued through university until they no longer offered courses in the study of the language itself. At the time, I had studied French for five years and traveled to that beautiful country twice. My friends knew I spoke French because I had used it on occasion before to pretend that none of us spoke English ─ a very useful escape in some places in China.

So as the obvious bridge between this English speaking dare and its French speaking goal, the girls asked me to talk to him. This is where I should have told them something I knew all along. You see, I have yet to meet someone who speaks French who does not also speak English.

Our conversation lasted about ten minutes during which I found that two of them were a couple (the tall one was single), the tall one was roughly the same age as my friends ─ mid twenties, they were all from Paris, they spoke fluent English, and they had been traveling in China for fun for about two weeks. The girl was a journalist and I don't remember what the boys were but they were just here on vacation. I answered their questions about us being from America and living here for five months to teach English in the capital city of the province.

From time to time throughout the conversation I would throw my friends a scrap or two, but as they spent the entire time standing six feet away and making rather silly fools of themselves, I was certainly not inclined to help them out much. Ladies. You were standing six feet away. He could hear everything you said. Even if he hadn't understood a single word, he'd still have known you were batting your eyelashes at him.

Whoever it was we had been waiting for arrived and onward we hiked. My friends drilled me for the conversation details and the most essential question of all: Did I tell him they thought he was hot?

I lied to my friends. I said he said thank you but he was in a relationship.

Kite

I never had a kite as a child. Like many things I'm discovering in my adulthood (no indoor pets, regular meals, bedtimes), this may have been wisdom on my parents' part. But don't tell them that. It might go to their heads.

Brian and I found kites at Costco. They were amazing. We demand awesomeness in everything we do, and kites were to be no exception. We underestimated, however, just how awesome conditions had to be in order to actually fly the kites. Eight-mile-an-hour wind doesn't sound like much. I figured it'd be about the same as a stiff breeze. I'm not the measurements and numbers person in this relationship. Brian is. So I probably should have listened to Brian to avoid the failure of the first kite expedition.

The wind on the first day was whipping my hair all over the place and pulling at the kites as four of us trekked to the park. Clearly there was enough wind to fly three kites. It was going to be magnificent! I could just see my butterfly kite sailing high against the clouds, the thin, filmy tails streaming out behind it. I'm not really a butterfly-kite person, but the tails sold me. Brian's kite was hexagonal with a koi on it and didn't have a tail at all. He liked it and in a funny way it suited him very well.

My excitement and determination to fulfill a childhood dream far outlasted all three of my companions' enthusiasm or stamina. After seven minutes it was fairly obvious to anyone that the wind was not steady or strong enough to fly even Genna's normal diamond-shaped kite, much less our much larger contraptions. But it took fifty-three more minutes of failed attempts and tangled kite tails before I surrendered the field and returned dejectedly to Genna's house for hot chocolate, which only made me feel a little bit better.

The second excursion went better, though Brian sustained a minor injury when his kite tried to decapitate him. No really, it tried. We had taken advantage of a perfectly clear and windy day to run our kites to an empty parking lot where once again we spent entirely too long trying to get my butterfly airborne. After a particularly irritating attempt ended with my kite tails battling tree branches, we set the butterfly aside for a little and focused on Brian's koi kite.

Brian's kite was very appropriately Brian's. While my kite had fluttered and coasted beautifully the moment it reached roof height, it tended to continue coasting when it ought to have been climbing. Despite this defect and its resulting short-lived flights, I gloried in every second of its successful sailing. Brian's kite was never so dainty or elegant. From the instant it left Brian's hand, that kite was trying to reach the sun. It kicked and bucked and fought for height. It twisted and torqued and tacked against the pull of the string and alternately clambered to the peak of its tether or crashed to the pavement in stunning failure. There was no in between. All it really needed for more flair was medieval trumpeters.

I had thought we'd be another half hour at trying to get Brian's kite up, but much like its owner, the kite took only a few tries to master its purpose. In an inexplicable blink of an eye, the kite was soaring. It stopped for nothing and wasted no time on frivolous coasting. There were no dainty drifts or quiet, fluttering sails. Just dominance. That kite ruled the sky.

It was better than I had ever dreamed it would be. Even though Brian had done all the hard work to get the kite up (I held the handle while he maneuvered the kite end and repeatedly threw it into the wind), he let me continue to fly it and play out its line once it was fully in flight. This was better than that fly-a-kite scene from Mary Poppins. I felt more than a little guilty. This was his kite, after all, and he had been the one to pancake dive to the ground when the kite went into a killer spiral and the line almost dissected him. (Note to self: Write to Randall Munroe and query under what conditions a kite string would be powerful enough to inflict serious bodily injury to a person. Also, bring one helmet to next kite flying.)

But Brian is a sweetheart and let me fly the kite while he admired his hard work from a comfortable position leaning against the nearby fence. I had to admit his kite was marvelous and we soon fell to wondering how high the kite would fly if we had enough string. (Oooh! Second question for Randall Munroe!) I passed Brian the kite handle and took up my butterfly. It was useless trying to get my kite in the air just now since the wind had died down at our level. But Brian's koi was flying as stately as ever. I wanted to know if it could fly at double its current length.

It could. Of course it could. It's the kite of awesomeness. We suffered several rope burns feeding that insatiable kite more length. But it was worth it to see the kite the size of a dime in the clear, blue sky. We laid on the grass for hours watching it, and all the while I quietly held my butterfly at my side. It's ok. She would have her chance.

We didn't get another good kite-flying day for weeks and when we did, it was in the brisk part of early fall when we had to decide how worth it kite-flying would be in comparison to how chapped the wind would make our hands. I was willing to go for it, though, because as yet my kite had not really flown. My kite needed to fly. She was beautiful and I could just hear her begging to sail just as high as Brian's koi. So with fresh determination we set out accompanied by Brian's youngest sister to fly our kites in an empty field.

With predictable repetition, my kite failed once again to gain proper height. She would rise to about half the length of her tether and then meander back and forth in aimless zig-zags. At any given moment and regardless of the strength or direction of the wind, she would plummet slowly in an obvious display of color and flutter. She loved nothing more than to make me think she was climbing high only to pause in her ascent and gracefully flap her wings before swooping left and right in figure eights. Her tails were exquisite when she did this, trailing as they did for twenty beautiful feet behind her. But no amount of coaxing, pleading, begging, or bargaining would make her go more than sixty percent of her rope. Brian, with inexhaustible patience, launched my butterfly again, and again, and again into the wind until one faster-than-normal nose dive made me fear for her health. I brought my butterfly in and we turned our attentions instead to Brian's koi.

Now a practiced hand after one spectacular, shiny success, Brian launched his champion kite into the sky. His koi climbed immediately, anxious once again to enter space. Within a minute he had fed it its entire length of string and still the kite pulled and pulled for more height. The kite knew there was more string to be had and impatiently demanded more. For a second time, I unstrung my butterfly and rested her belly-down in the crabgrass to double the tether for the koi. He drank the length in and inflicted yet more string burns as he scaled the atmospheres. Even two strings were not enough. He reached the end of the line with a hard jerk and hungrily pulled for more.

We had, however, only the two strings from the Costco kites. Brian's sister's kite had flown only a little and she had set it aside to watch the koi. Naturally, we turned to the resources at hand and began disassembling his sister's kite to feed the koi. His sister helped him while I held firm to the handle of the koi. It took an impressive amount of strength to keep hold of that kite. But I had a good grip on it and dared to look away for a moment to watch Brian. 

That moment was all the kite needed. With a loud SNAP! the handle in my hand broke into two pieces and I was no longer in control of the koi in the sky. Brian's reflexes are remarkable and at the sound of the handle breaking he had bounded away after the other end of the handle. I stared blankly at the broken plastic in my hand for a second before following suit after Brian. There was never a chance that I'd catch up with either Brian or the kite, but Brian had a good shot at chasing it down. Or so I thought. I hobbled dementedly across the field in a broken gait, watching Brian and his sister sprint in a dead heat for the tumbling plastic handle.

Neither of them made it. The field ended in a tall wooden fence on the far side of which grew a towering, branch-filled tree. (Yes, I know all trees have branches, but this one had so many branches!) Caught deftly on the end of one supple bough was the other half of the handle I still clutched in my hand. By the time I stumbled, quite literally, onto the scene, Brian and his sister had already been discussing retrieval tactics for a few minutes.

Spoiler alert: we didn't get the kite back. We tried. For hours. And hours. Fruitlessly. The attempts weren't even reasonable after a little. I think at one point there had been discussion of putting Brian's sister on my shoulders, even though Brian would have been able to touch the top of her head with his hand even if we did that. We fetched ladders and poles, or at least Brian did while his sister and I kept vigil beneath the kite string. But physics had us long since beat. The tree was too tall and the kite was pulling too hard. As dusk began to fall, Brian gently pulled me away from the tree. 

I felt terrible. This kite was our responsibility. We couldn't just leave it there abandoned heartlessly in a field! It's not like the kite can't see us and doesn't know that we're walking away from it! I wanted to call out to the kite and tell him we'd be back for him. That we'd find him even if we had to drive all over the city to see where he fell. But I was a twenty-seven year-old college graduate and that would have been infantile. Even Brian would have given me a funny look if I had done that.

We trailed quietly back to where both the other kites still sat on the ground. Brian's sister's was at least still complete. Mine was now stringless. I lingered at the edge of the field, casting about for a reason to wait a little longer, see if the wind died down in just another minute. Brian tugged my sleeve and nodded towards the house. It was time to go. I followed along, but lagged behind for just a second so I could surreptitiously give my butterfly a secret hug. At least she wasn't the one who was lost. But that made me feel terribly guilty.

Dear Koi. I'm sorry we lost you. If I'd had my way, we'd have searched for you all night and all day. I hope you broke free and flew to the flippin' moon. 

Dear Butterfly. I'll find you another string. I promise.

Never give a writer a kite.