Mom's love flies in on the wings of a butterfly

Mom had a huge love of nature, but butterflies held a special place in her heart.  She often wore colorful clothes and jewelry decorated with them.  As a child I learned many of the names of particular species of butterflies and moths from her.  Every time I see a butterfly, I think of her and smile.  Mom has used butterflies as her messengers on several occasions to let me know that she is sending her love.  I wrote about one of them in an earlier blog. http://hollykallie.blogspot.com/2014/03/its-year-2000-and-i-have-run-away-from.html

Today marks the 13th anniversary of her passing.  Of course she wasn't going to let the day go by without one of her butterfly winks.  I woke up this morning to find a butterfly kite left by a dear friend on a bench outside my door.

My friend knew that mom loved butterflies and that this was the anniversary of her journey into spirit.  What she didn't know was that mom also dearly loved making and flying kites.

I must have been about 10 years old when mom mischievously let me skip school on a warm and windy spring day.  She had more interesting plans for us.  That morning we built a huge kite that was taller than I was out of wood and a flowered silk fabric she had purchased.

I remember that day so clearly even though it was over 50 years ago.  We walked to a nearby park with our kite and a huge spool of heavy string.  I remember launching the kite and how the wind took it so quickly up into the sky that we had trouble holding on to the large spool as it unwound.  Very soon it was a speck high in the blue sky above us.  We ran out of string and for a wild few minutes the kite danced around above us as we hung on for dear life and laughed ourselves silly.  The wind was stronger than we anticipated and in a little while the string broke.  We watched the kite as it drifted down out of the sky a few blocks away.  Then we ran giggling all of the way to retrieve our beautiful kite where it had landed not too far from my school.  It lived to fly another day and I never got caught for skipping school.

In honor of mom today, I knew I had to go fly a kite and share the story of my mom, her love of butterflies and our day of kite flying and laughter with my granddaughters.  So the girls and I put mom's kite together.

And went to a park to let it fly.

And also went to a really beautiful field high upon a hill.

And hugged a very huge tree.

And climbed another tree.

All in honor of my mom, who taught me the names of all of the butterflies and birds, how to climb trees, build forts, fly kites, swim like a fish and fly down snow covered slopes on skis.  Thanks mom.  Your love shines on.