Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

There’s a lovely Truman Capote short story, something he wrote for a woman’s magazine in the ’50s, when he was minting his writerly self. A Christmas Memory reads as memoir and describes a little boy and his elderly distant cousin, unlikely friends in a not very friendly household. Each Christmas, they make each other paper kites.

Kites come in all sizes, colors and complexities, but nothing has really changed. You attach to a string a thing that the wind will catch, and then watch it dance. Every year in Long Beach, Washington, kite lovers celebrate this dance — wind and human connected by a filament — at the Washington State International Kite Festival that lasts days and draws tens of thousands.

We went this year but car trouble kidnapped us and didn’t free us until late in the day. We did arrive in time for the night fliers. We parked ourselves in a comfy spot on the sand, and as the cloudy sky lost light, the kites came alive with sparkling color.

Why am I telling you this now? Well, the festival happens annually the third full week of August. We tried reserving a campsite for the festival starting last February, but every slot on the Washington side of the border within an hour’s drive of Long Beach was already booked. Hotels? Forget it. People love this festival and come from all over for it.

We managed to get a campsite on the Oregon side, at the Fort Stevens State Park. One brief taste of that night kite show convinced us we’re going next year and have marked the calendar.

Something about the tug of a small sail attached to a string in my hand. Something that lets a part of me fly free.

A note about that Capote story: I love it so much I often gather friends at Christmas so that we can read it aloud. I have it in The Complete Stories of Truman Capote, but it can be found online. For my writer friends, if you need a guide on the value of showing vs. telling, read it.

Photos by Craig Cherry