Kite Day

One breezy day in April, my school—Northington Elementary in Tuscaloosa—was having kite day. I must’ve been in the fourth or fifth grade, which dates this story to about 1991.

It’s the first time I remember being embarrassed.

Back in those days, before smartphones and TikTok, if you were a kid, you distinguished yourself by flaunting your holographic pencil collection, or by the precision of your paper football folding skills, or by sporting your concert-worn NKOTB t-shirt.

Kristin, the coolest girl in my class, had actually caught a towel Donnie (or was it Monty, Lonnie, Danny or Joey?) had used to wipe away his sweat before throwing it into the crowd at a New Kids on the Block show. She brought it to school the next day. For us kids, Kristin’s sweat rag was second only to the Shroud of Turin.

But the ultimate way the cool kids truly separated themselves from the perpetual losers was on kite day.

Cool kids flew box kites or Bat Signal kites or dragon kites. The King of Cool had a kite with two strings, and he flew it with the same seriousness and skill as if he was piloting a Beechcraft Bonanza.

But not me. My mom and dad sent me to school with a pitiful looking, itty bitty, crinkly ladybug kite. The only thing worse would’ve been to fly the ladybug while wearing Ralphie’s bunny suit from “A Christmas Story.”

“Trust me,” Dad said, “this will fly way better than anything else out there.”

Sure enough, while the Bat Signal was stuck in a tree and Bonanza boy’s kite crashed and burned, my ladybug was a speck in the sky. An embarrassing speck, but still a speck. And way up there, you couldn’t really tell it was a ladybug.

Turns out my dad was a kite-flying guru. I grew up hearing stories about Demon, a cat my parents had, who actually flew on a kite when he was a kitten. This was before the days of rapid-fire phone photography, so I’ll take Dad’s word on that.

Any time we went to the beach, kite flying was a must, just as much so as swimming in the ocean, playing putt putt golf or buying a floaty from Alvin’s Island. Dad would buy a kite (always a simple one, just like the aforementioned ladybug), plus two, three or four spools of kite string. Then he’d load all that string onto an oversized reel, which allowed us to let the kite out with more ease. No doubt Dad would load the kite string with the same precision as when he’d load line onto a fishing reel.

Once fully launched, the kite’s tail became more than just a stabilizer. It was like a flashing light atop a radio tower, since airplanes and helicopters now had to divert around it. Once the kite was in orbit, Dad would tie the string off on a chaise lounge. While we would swim, dig, build sand castles, go inside for a nap, swim again, go to supper, and finally go to bed, the kite flew on.

Sometimes the string would break overnight. Sometimes the next morning the kite was still soaring. Regardless, it was all part of our adventure together.

Another time when we were in Pass Christian, Miss., at the “Family Enrichment Week,” which Dad always called the Nerd Convention, we flew a kite from the balcony outside our room. True to form, we tied it off. The next morning, the kite had crashed, with the string laid over the train track. I remember worrying that it would cause a derailment. Dad chuckled at that.

This past week, Jen and the kids came with me to Orange Beach for a conference I covered for the magazine. We brought a kite we already had, and while I was in meetings, Jen picked up two extra spools of string. After supper Thursday, we played some more in the Gulf, then launched the kite.

We didn’t have any scissors on hand, so when we got to the end of the string that came with the kite, we tied the first long spool onto the plastic handle. As we let out the additional string, the handle disappeared into the twilight.Then, when we got to the end of that spool, we tied the second spool’s string onto it. That spool quickly disappeared into the gathering darkness. All the while, we could just barely see the kite, high in the dark sky, seemingly flying over our hotel. I’d planned to tie off the end of the second spool, but just as I reached the end, the string went slack.

Julian and I tracked the kite to a pit beside our hotel where a new building is going up. As I rolled up the string, the kite actually took off again in the wind, but the flight was short lived and the kite crashed back into the seagrass. Best I can tell, our Dollar Tree kite survived the crash unscathed. It’s in the back of the car now as we’re driving back home.

The execution wasn’t as precise as when my dad would fly kites on the beach, but it was perfectly fun and distinctly us. If Dad were alive, I would’ve called to tell him about it.

But since he’s not, I thought I’d tell you.

The Original Frank M. McCormack

My grandfather passed away a week ago. He was 93 years old and was married to my grandmother for more than 70 years.

Read that over again for effect. My grandparents were married for a lifetime.

I’m named, in part, after him. I’m Frank Michael, after my dad. My granddad was Frank M. too, but his middle name was Muncher, his mother’s maiden name. Her full name was Annie Estelle Muncher McCormack, but I grew up only knowing her as “Tanmugger.” As I understand it, my dad called her that when he was little, and it stuck. So much so that I was an adult before I ever knew her real name.

Incidentally, I called my granddad “Dendum,” but it never caught on outside our nuclear family. Sweetly, when Jen and I started having kids, my grandparents made a conscious decision to retain “Dendum,” although my grandmother, “Mema” to me, opted for our kids to call her “Gigi.” Everyone else calls them Grandmommy and Granddaddy. 

I really only have flashes of memories of Dendum from when I was growing up. Him driving his tractor on an Easter Sunday, pulling a trailer full of hay and children around the farm. He and my dad cutting trees, me swinging an ax with intermittent success. Dendum was hurt badly in a tractor accident up at the farm years ago, and I vaguely remember visiting him in the hospital. What I remember clearly from then is sitting in the den with my mom and dad, and Dad recounting, as best anyone could tell, what had happened, crying at the mention of ants.

As the years marched on and Dendum recovered fully, most of that faded from memory. Time heals, and what I remember most from that chapter are the proverbs he invented in his hospital room.

Like this one:

“You live and learn, but sometimes when you learn, you’ve already lived.”

And this one:

“If no one shuts the door, the door don’t get shut.”

He didn’t always speak in proverbs. Like the time when I decided to scale the wall at the back of the yard at my grandparents’ house near Bryant Denny Stadium. I was probably wearing some Nike or Reebok pumps, which naturally made me want to leap down to the adjacent street. But it was too high for me to get back up and over. Next thing I know, Dendum is peering over the wall at me and asking how, exactly, did I plan to get back over the wall. I honestly can’t remember whether I found a way back over the wall or if he came around and walked with me back to the house.

I miss that house. Looking now on Google Maps, I see the owners have let vines grow up all over the tree. Jen and I sometimes wish we’d bought that house when my grandparents moved.

But “you live and learn,” as they say.

I actually have more memories of Dendum from after he became a great grandfather. Like when he read “The Wheels on the Bus” to Ana (read, not sang). Because nothing sounds more great grandfatherly than the wheels on the bus (speak it to yourself) going “bumpity bump, bumpity bump, bumpity bump.” Or the time my cousin Laurie’s daughter climbed onto his lap and he said, “Why, I believe it’s time for Dinosaur Train.” Or the time he and my grandmother rode down to New Orleans with Dad and Dianne to see Julian when he was first born. He was the first McCormack great grandson (of two, so far).

As my dad drove us to our house, we passed the New Orleans Museum of Art, and I told them how City Park was putting up a new NOMA sign but got the letter spacing wrong. It mistakenly said “New Orleans Museum o fArt.”

That was a joke. I made it up.

In September 2021, Jen gave birth to our third child, a boy we named Eóin (OH-win) Francis. In doing some light genealogical study, I discovered we have more Franks in our ancestry than anyone realized. Besides me, my dad and my granddad, there are multiple Franklins and several ladies named Frances. So it seemed fitting to give Eóin a variation of Frank for his middle name.

I don’t know if it was the name or if it’s because Eóin smiles always, but when Dendum went into the hospital the third week of July 2022, he was always asking about the baby. Dendum went into the hospital because of heart failure, and all indications were that he didn’t have long to live. He eventually moved to a nursing care facility where he could have visitors of all ages, and we were able to go as a whole family two or three times.

The last time we visited was August 2022, when Eóin was still toddling around and handing out kisses and high fives. That was the last time we saw him.

The last time I talked to him was a week later, when we read a little of the 23rd Psalm and I told him two corny jokes. He laughed most at the joke I learned from Julian: Why won’t seagulls fly over a bay? Answer: Because then they’d be bagels.

At his funeral in September that year, I shared with my family one of the most vivid memories I have of Dendum. The time frame: the 90s. The setting: Christmas Day at my Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Nancy's house. The family had gathered in the front room around Dendum, who opened a Bible and read the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. I particularly remember him reading about the angel announcing the birth of “‘a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.’”

Toward the end, when we’d visit Dendum and I would tell him I’d see him soon, he’d reply, “I’ll either be here or somewhere else.” Well, after his funeral in October 2022 we went to see my grandmother, who was at the same facility he’d been. Dendum, obviously, wasn’t there.

Instead, he, like the shepherds so long ago, has heard the angel chorus and has worshiped at the feet of the Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

A Bird Tale In Three Acts

Act I: Careful What You Wish For

This story begins in early February 2020. I had long regretted having our pet parakeet, Birdie. Her proper name was Valentine Bertha Kate McCormack, Birdie for short.

The poor bird lived a solitary life (oddly appropriate, given what happened during the spring of 2020). She lived in our laundry room, mostly forgotten. We went out of town once and Birdie had busted out. When we returned, we found her in our tub, faint and famished. The dumb bird did it to herself. Another time she did the same exact thing, but somehow got lost under our bed. Another time, she flew onto the top of the refrigerator, and when Jen went to help her back to the cage, she fled afoot and fell behind the refrigerator. She was marooned there until I got back from a work trip.

Well, as 2019 drew to a close, I would "innocently" and "benevolently" bring the ol' girl out to the deck and "accidentally" leave the cage door open. "Daddy! Birdie was outside but her cage door was open! Thank goodness she didn't fly away!" my oldest would exclaim. I heard that countless times until one fateful day in early 2020 Jen came in and whispered, "Birdie's not in her cage." Success. The kids didn't notice for two weeks. 

When they did, they cried.

Act II: Deja Vu Aflutter Again

Fast forward to March 23, 2020. We spent a good bit of the afternoon and evening that day outside, awestruck by the beauty around us. I spotted a spiny (and probably stingy) caterpillar. Jen and the kids found a super tiny monarch caterpillar. The elephant ears were blooming. Pace the caterpillar's chrysalis was looking great. Then I got a text from Jen: "Come see this."

I walked out the back door and there in our pecan tree was a cockatiel. Gray body with bright orange cheeks. We whistled, Ana screeched at it, Jules waved a broom. Finally, the little lost cockatiel (which Ana named Pica) made its way to a near enough branch that we reached out a stick and it climbed aboard. The poor thing was crazy hungry and immediately began devouring a seed stick left over from the Birdie days. Maybe Pica is thirsty, we said. I volunteered to go get some water, so I picked up the birdcage that had been brought outside. Disaster struck. The bottom of the cage fell off and landed on the bench with a metallic crash. Pica, spooked, flew off. Ana burst into tears.

Daddy did it again. I orchestrated the flight of another pet bird. I went back to grilling hamburgers.

Act III: Jennifer, the Bird Whisperer

At that point, I thought the story was over and I'd have a good story about irony, where I had the bird that I couldn't get rid of then lost the bird that everyone wanted to catch. But Jen would not be so easily denied.

She went two houses down and actually trespassed into the backyard of the empty house. There was Pica, high up in a palm tree. Then she flew westward again. This time, Jen and the kids found her on a side street. By some miracle, they coaxed her down to the seed stick again. Relieved and exuberant, they called me to bring the cage, I walked down the street and undertook the task of putting Pica in the cage. That bird took one look at me, somehow knew the type of bird loser I am, and flew off. I’d done it again! Fortunately, Ana was around the corner and didn't see. By this point, I was done. I left Jen in charge.

Five minutes passed. Then 10 minutes. Then in walked Jennifer through the front door, birdcage in her hand, and in the cage the cockatiel. How in the world did she do that?

That night, I slept in the tent in the backyard with the kids, and on the deck in the birdcage was the cockatiel.

And no, I didn’t slip out in the middle of the night to open the birdcage.