Flying High Against All Odds

I still vividly remember the time I got my first kite. All the children in the neighborhood had gotten them. There was something special about how kites could touch the sky and soar as high as you could get them. The challenge of smooth flight combined with the skill it took to keep your kite’s tail from getting tangled in tree limbs and breaking made kite-flying hard to master. I enjoyed flying kites and watching others demonstrate their skills at flying them.

I often had dreams where I flew over my town. In those dreams, I soared above the multicolored treetops while observing all that was occurring in regular life below me. From my skyward vantage point, I could see women hanging clothes on clotheslines, children playing, cows grazing, and funeral processions on the side of the highway, headlights blinking in reverence for the dead and in empathy for their loved ones. I would also fly over “future me”; this was the adult version of myself — the person I would become.

The future seemed so far away. I remember it being difficult to imagine my life moving past its current state. If you were to judge from the circumstances in which I was raised, the future was only a fleeting dream in my mind’s periphery, never to be articulated or shared with anyone. In my dreams, I had these gigantic white wings. I would soar wherever I wanted to go. I do not recall ever flapping my wings, just kind of gliding smoothly and effortlessly across a blue sky filled with puffy white clouds without a care, void of fear. I only felt hope for the dreams running rampant in my mind, wishing that they would one day come true.

Somehow, I held on to that hope. One day, just as our kites would fly, I, too, would not become ensnared by lurking obstacles; I would soar effortlessly above the clouds. No matter what happened, I kept pressing on towards a dream I kept close to my heart. And against all odds, I would soar above my circumstances with wings like an eagle.