Summer in Slo-Mo

A blissful breeze whispered off the water in Cape May, N.J., as I sat among a group of thirteen glowstick-toting celebrants. We sat in beach chairs and on blankets in the cool sand, waiting for the sun to set and the fireworks to begin. Someone handed me a piece of blue-and-red plastic that lit up if you pressed a button. I pressed it; the red, star-shaped top glowed like a lighthouse in Vegas. Behind me, friends were munching on Muddy Buddies. To my left, kids were gobbling up chocolate-chip cookies. All around us, a buzz of children’s voices filled the air.

The promise of summer peaks on July 4th, in a way that feels both exhilarating and far too fleeting. Summer itself comes and goes as quickly as a firefly’s flicker, with a sweet taste that lasts about as long as a soft-serve vanilla cone with sprinkles. We await those fireworks with joy and anticipation – and then they’re gone, and it’s already July 5th.

If only we could find a way to stall time, and turn our summers into more of a meandering brook than a roaring river. A few weeks ago, I introduced my girls to the Back to the Future movies. They were captivated by the adventures of Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown, even in the less-than-spectacular sequels. It’s been more than 25 years since Marty and Doc first flew that DeLorean, but to my wife and me, the story was just as captivating as ever.

Maybe that’s because as we grow older, we long to control time much more than we ever did as a youngster. Does another Fourth of July really have to fly by so fast? Is it almost time for baseball’s All-Star Game already? Do I really see back-to-school specials in the Sunday circulars?

Slowing down the pace of summer is, of course, impossible – it’s like trying to catch a kite after you’ve let it go into the heavens. It sails away from you, and all you can do is watch, reflect, and savor the memory.

But wait a minute … does it always have to be this way? I mean, what if the kite, say, gets caught somewhere – on a roof, maybe – and then you retrieve it? Can’t that happen? Isn’t that something straight out of Doc Brown’s playbook?

As Sunday afternoon breezed into Sunday evening, we stood on the beach with our dear friends the Fergusons. My friend Brent decided that the wind had picked up just enough, and out came his kites. You should know right off that flying kites is not just a way for Brent to relive his childhood. While this 40-year-old man does have the curiosity of Doc Brown, Brent also has a Carpe Diem approach to life that leaves more than enough room for experiencing the momentary beauty of a kite in flight.

So he started with an Omega kite, which took to the air quickly and somehow ended up in my hands. While Brent got the kids started with a box kite and an owl kite, I kept letting more string out, as this multi-colored kite turned into a small speck in the summer sky. The seagulls flew far beneath it, and the wind kept it strong and secure in the air. It seemed, to my eyes, a half a mile away.

Brent watched, captivated, and encouraged me to let the string out completely. I did, and it was at this moment that we learned something new – the string was not attached to the handle. Goodbye, kite. We all shouted in surprise, then watched helplessly as the Omega soared northward into the blue sky. Brent’s first kite, gone forever.

Another beachgoer walked over to us, having witnessed the whole thing. As he spoke with Brent, he pointed at the kite. “You know,” he said, pointing upward, “it’s taking on air again.” And so it was. The kite string was caught, somewhere. It was no longer flying away. Brent went down to the street, to try and find the string. No luck.

As he walked the streets of Cape May in search of an elusive sliver of string, I took the box kite and started letting the string out on this one. After some conversation and planning, we decided that I would walk toward the Omega kite and try to get it twisted around the box kite. Then I’d try and pull them both back home.

Now I have never been to Afghanistan, and I’ve never seen kite fighting in person. But after two years of teaching Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, I must have learned something about handling a kite. Because as soon as I approached the Omega kite with my box kite, they danced around each other, and the Omega wrapped itself around the box kite’s string. Some 20 minutes later, I stood on a sand dune with both kites dropping into Brent’s outstretched hands. Thirty minutes after that, we finished tracking the string, which had caught itself on the roofs of five different houses. That kite was caught, all right. Had we not tried to save it, the kite would still be flying, five days later.

In all, it was only an hour of joyful salvation in the sun. But in retrospect, maybe it was a little more than that. Maybe for that hour, Brent and Warren really did turn into Doc and Marty – and instead of Plutonium, all they needed was string and wind. With that kite, you could say that Brent and I slowed summer down just a bit, and made the fleeting moment last longer than it should have.

A little more than 24 hours later, we were all at the beach together, watching the fireworks sparkle. As the pyrotechnics brought summer to its paramount moment of promise, we both thought of the colors we’d seen sparkle in the air the day before. We thought of that hour when the river became a brook, and a freed kite chose not to glide away. It was a bit like a firefly that glowed all night, or a vanilla cone that never reached bottom. It was summer in slo-mo – about as hard to find as a DeLorean on the streets.