“And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven.”

“That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.”

“Her lips remind me of kite strings and I find myself thinking about panda bears. Panda bears do not fly kites, I tell myself. 'I thought you were dead,' she says.Maybe if you taped a kite to a panda paw and scared the panda so that it started running, the kite might start to lift off.”

“And I began to let him go. Hour by hour. Days into months. It was a physical sensation, like letting out the string of a kite. Except that the string was coming from my center.”

“A kite can't really fly free,that's just an expression. In order to soar high in the sky the string of a kite needs to be anchored. If the string breaks the kite drops back to the ground. The kite's freedom depends on it not being as free as he thinks it is.”

“Someone once told me that children are like kites. You struggle just to get them in the air; they crash; you add a longer tail. Then they get caught in a tree; you climb up and bring them down, and untangle the string; you run to get them aloft again. Finally, the kite is airborne, and it flies higher and higher, as you let out more string, until it's so high in the sky, it looks like a bird. And if the string snaps, and you've done your job right, the kite will continue to soar in the wind, all by itself.”