Go Fly A Kite!

I’ve always known that my brother and I were different … opposites in most ways, really. When I was reading an essay by one of my favorite writers, Leif Enger, recently entitled “Why I Carry A Kite With Me Everywhere”, it got me thinking about our differences, which were evident even as young children.

Curtis was always outgoing, an explorer. Mom often told a story about how when they lived in a house trailer adjacent to Suttles Swimming Pool in Charlotte, NC in the early 1960s, three-year-old Curtis went missing one day. Frantic, she first checked every one of his usual hiding places inside the house, then circled the outside of the trailer, calling out to him. Several other neighbor moms joined the hunt. She found him standing with his  bare toes wrapped around the concrete edge of the 100 foot x 200 foot pool’s deep end, all alone, gazing at the water as if considering jumping in. Her heart nearly stopped as she circled the huge pool to grab him.

I’m nearly five years younger than Curtis. When I was five and he was ten our parents had an inground pool built at our home in the Westminster Park subdivision in Huntersville, NC. Mama taught me to swim. I’m sure that near miss with Curtis was never far from her mind when the pool was being built and she began my swimming lessons from the first day we were allowed in the new pool. I was the annoying kid who was always screaming, “Mama! Watch me!” as I dove in the pool. Though I could swim like a fish from age five on, I don’t think I swam alone in that pool until I was in my middle teens.

While I loved to walk the beach hand-in-hand with Mama, looking for shark’s teeth, young Curtis was a kite flyer. Every trip to the beach, he’d head for the kite section in Wings or Eagles on the first day. Every evening of our vacation after dinner, when I was worn out from a full day of waves and sand and sun, I would beg Mama or Daddy to head to the pool to float around with me. Even though we had a pool at home, I couldn’t wait to try out the hotel pool where I would usually meet one other girl like me who I would hang out with for the week and who usually became a penpal for awhile after our week at the beach ended. Curtis would head to the nearly deserted beach to fly his kite. As I floated on my back in the sun-warmed water, I would watch the kite get smaller and smaller as he ran down the beach in the twilight.

When I was little we did ride the waves together on blue and yellow heavy canvas lifeguard rental floats and body surfed together when I was a bit older. We do share a love for the ocean waves. But, while I could wile away half a day making a sandcastle just above the tide line or reading under an umbrella listening to the waves, Curtis was always moving. If he hadn’t met some boys or girls to toss the Frisbee or Nerf football around with, he would goad Mom or Dad to do it. 

When I was about six I begged for and got a Big Wheel for my birthday. If you aren’t familiar with Big Wheels, they were a plastic low slung trike recommended for children 3-8 years of age and up to 70 lbs. I loved pedaling it up our long concrete drive, then coasting down and making a slow loop around the sidewalk from the pool to the front yard and back around to the driveway. Probably the first time I got off of it, eleven-year-old Curtis grabbed it, planted one foot on the seat and, as if it were a scooter, rode it to the top of the driveway, pushing with the other foot. Turning, he employed the same technique to get it rolling down the incline of the driveway, then jumped on the seat with both feet and screamed down the driveway bent over the handlebars as fast as he could make it go. At the bottom, he went into a sideways skid that, I swear, took half the plastic off the wheels. Of course, I went crying to Mama and she made him give me back my Big Wheel. Also, of course, he repeated the feat every time I got off the toy and Mama wasn’t looking. I think he got 50% of his enjoyment from the ride and 50% from making me run crying to Mama. (That was a sport he never tired of until he moved out of the house at twenty or so. LOL!)

Growing up, I’m sure Curtis was not happy about often being saddled with his little sister, the tagalong. I vividly remember a time we were supposed to be taking a walk together on the beach. As usual, I was head down looking for shark’s teeth and shells. I stalled at every shell bed, afraid I would miss some treasure if I didn’t stop to look carefully. Suddenly, I looked up and realized Curtis was half a mile down the beach. My ten-year-old heart began beating fast. I wasn’t supposed to be alone that far from Mom and Dad. I began trotting to catch up to him, keeping an eye on his Budweiser print bathing suit through the crowd. Halfway there, I realized he had stopped at the pier to talk to someone; an adult male. I caught up to him, panting, to find him in deep conversation. He’d seen the man coming off the pier and noticed he favored a neighbor’s dad a great deal, so he just asked him, “Hey! Are you related to Bob McMurray?” The guy replied that he was Bob’s brother, down for a week at the beach from Chicago or somewhere. I stood beside Curtis, catching my breath, listening to a full scale conversation about how Curtis played basketball with Jay McMurray and lived around the block from him and had been lifelong friends with him and on and on …. When the guy finally said his goodbyes and walked away, I asked, “How do you know that guy?” He said, “I don’t.” Then he told me the story of how he had just noticed how much he looked like Jay’s dad and asked him who he was. I was stunned. To hear the part of the conversation I had been privy to, I thought he had known the guy for years. That was Curtis … never met a stranger.

I, on the other hand, got lost once playing on the escalator at the tri-level Sears in downtown Charlotte. I was afraid to ask any of the strangers around for help. Back then, Allstate Insurance had little kiosks in Sears stores. The Allstate man saw me crying by the escalator and helped me find my mother. I never played on another escalator and don’t really care for them to this day. LOL! 

When I was a teen, I loved to have a summer day stretched out in front of me where I had nothing on the agenda beyond drenching my skin in Hawaiian Tropics oil and reading a book by the pool. When the sun got too hot, I knew I could jump in, cool off, then read another chapter. I was in Heaven when Dad found floating lounge chairs that allowed me to read IN THE POOL!! If Curtis had that same day off, I might as well leave my book inside. He would have half the kids in the neighborhood over to swim and play basketball on our concrete half court. Curtis and his friends loved nothing more than to take a running start from the basketball court to the pool deck and do a cannonball right beside my floating chair, trying to capsize me.

To this day, I struggle with speaking in public, meeting new people, trying new things. I still think of the perfect day as one filled with the solitude that allows me to read a good book from cover to cover on a beach or by a pool or in the reading chair in my bedroom. I have a small group of close friends and family and enjoy keeping up with the classmates from my high school graduating class of 1983.

Curtis, on the other hand, can talk the paint off the walls. He talks to complete strangers and has friends and acquaintances in all walks of life. I’d be surprised if he’s paused to read a book from cover to cover since elementary school. At almost sixty-five years old, he’d still love to spend an afternoon flying a kite on the beach or roller blading or biking. 

I suppose it’s true that Curtis took after our Dad and I took after our Mom. Our almost eighty-seven year old dad likes to say he’s like Roy Roger’s who claimed he never met a man he didn’t like. Personally, I don’t believe that statement. Truthfully, there are many men and women out there who no one could possibly like. Like my Mama, I believe that about thirty percent of people are worth knowing and about ten percent worth keeping close counsel with.

Mama shared and fostered my love of books. While Dad is a reader, too, now that he is older and less active, when he was able, he enjoyed being out in the world, helping with not only the teams Curtis and I played on, but the next generation or two of Optimist Club kids’ sports teams as well. For a decade or so, he spent his Fall Friday nights being the “Voice of the Vikings”, announcing North Mecklenburg High School’s football games. Something I would never have been comfortable doing. Curtis enjoys working with his son’s Scout troop. He got a late start having kids and finds himself camping out and working on badge qualifications with his fifteen-year-old son at a stage in life when most of his friends have grandchildren.

From the time I married at twenty until I lost her when I was thirty-six, my mom was my best friend. We loved the same things: reading, shopping, walking on the beach, quiet, solitude. My mom was a Boss …. at work and at home. I admired her and aspired to be like her. She was an organized, take charge person who came into every situation looking for what needed to be done and doing it. She expected a lot of us and I lived to make her proud of me. She and Curtis sometimes butted heads over the rules she had in place for us. I, on the other hand, was home by 11:30 the night before my wedding … and I was twenty years old!

At nearly sixty, I still pretty much follow the rules and live my life, striving for comfort, peace, and an unlimited supply of books. Curtis is still finding himself at sixty-five, testing the limits, often leaping before he looks. I sometimes picture him today, standing at the deep end of the pool with his toes wrapped around the concrete edge, ready to jump.