by Patrick Caneday

Created on: March 26, 2009

I can do pony tails, but my braids are painful and sloppy.

I have 2 daughters whom I love and adore more than it is possible to describe. Sometimes I can pass as a parent. Sometimes my efforts are like my braids.

The day started like any other Sunday. Wake up, watch TV, Fruity Pebbles, Cartoons. "What are we going to do today?" they ask."Go to church," I respond. Whine, complain, relent. Get dressed, change clothes, brush teeth. Change clothes. Change clothes. Change clothes.

It was a blustery day. Cloudy, slight drizzles, windy. The sermon that day came from a section commonly referred to as the "Hall of Faith," wherein every sentence begins with "By faith..." and goes on to describe the amazing things a litany of biblical figures did by simply living through faith. In other words, people that threw off the Bell Curve for the rest of us.

The topic was Moses' parents, and how their faith in just the first few months of his life, established a foothold in him. The bible is a little fuzzy about what else this guy Moses did with the rest of his life.

The clouds blew away that afternoon, and the sky was blue as blue can be. With a good breeze going, it was the perfect day to fly a kite. The girls were overjoyed at the thought. They usually are when the day takes them to Toys R Us. We packed up a cooler full of drinks and snacks and head out with visions of this being one of those moments in a family's life that would be a benchmark for happiness. Years later they would recall it with such rapturous joy, "remember that day that Daddy took us to fly kites" they would say in dreamlike tones. They would thank me in their acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Aerodynamics, "it all started that day my Dad took me to fly a kite..."

We bought our kites (Tinkerbell, an owl and a WWII Fighter Plane. Guess which was mine) and went to the wide open field at a nearby park. They played on the jungle gym while I assembled the kites. As usually happens when a boy tackles a project to build or destroy something, I was engrossed. So much so that I paid no attention to the charcoal gray clouds moving in. Looking back, they moved in a direction I've never seen clouds move, as if they had a purpose.

The Tinkerbell kite was built and off went the 5 year-old, running and screaming with joy. Exactly the scene I pictured. I assembled the Owl and off went the 7 year-old, equally happy. It was all coming together. A parent's dream: happy children playing outdoors in perfect harmony.

Now I could

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