Friendship is an important theme of the story, the narrator, Buddy, often telling stories about “my friend.” He asks her earlier in the story, “When you're grown up, will we still be friends?" And friends they remain, if only through letters, although through his relationship with her he realizes that the experience of childhood, that innocence and delight, exists only in memory. When Buddy was a child, they made each other kites, and these objects, like many in the story, become symbolic of their friendship. At the end of the story Buddy hears that she has died, and this news, he says "sever[s] from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.” The kites again remind him of their friendship, each a heart—symbolic of love—which he will preserve in his memory.
What do the kites symbolize in "A Christmas Memory"?
In "A Christmas Memory," seven-year-old protagonist Buddy and a sixty-something-year-old relative share a special bond despite their difference in age. Buddy is a sensitive boy without parents, and the friend is a childlike elderly lady. Both are outcasts among their household of seemingly hostile relatives.
Buddy and his friend are each other’s only companion and collaborate together on special projects away from other people. In addition to homemade fruitcakes, which they send as gifts to other people, Buddy and his friend build custom-designed kites for each other each Christmas. Then they briefly leave their oppressive home and fly these kites in the wind.
The kites represent friendship and freedom. The fact that the characters create kites specifically for the other person demonstrates how well they know and love each other. Their gifts to each other are more special and meaningful than all presents from other people.
She says her favorite gift is the kite I built her. And it is very beautiful; though not as beautiful as the one she made me, which is blue and scattered with gold and green Good Conduct stars; moreover, my name is painted on it, "Buddy."
Each kite is part of both of them—the maker and the recipient. This makes a kite particularly meaningful as a gift; it symbolizes how closely they are bonded as well as how important they are to each other. She even asks him,
"When you're grown up, will we still be friends?" I say always. "But I feel so bad, Buddy. I wanted so bad to give you a bike. I tried to sell my cameo Papa gave me. Buddy"—she hesitates, as though embarrassed—"I made you another kite." Then I confess that I made her one, too; and we laugh.
No other gift is necessary; their annual ritual of making and giving each other kites is enough and particularly special:
We are champion kite fliers who study the wind like sailors; my friend, more accomplished than I, can get a kite aloft when there isn't enough breeze to carry clouds.
After everyone opens Christmas gifts, Buddy and his friend escape to "study the wind" and fly the kites. Often scorned for being slow and foolish, the elderly lady can excel in one area; Buddy learns yet another skill (in addition to baking, etc.) from her. Away from the house, they are free to run, make noise, and frolic without being scolded by the relatives. The "pasture below the house" where they fly the kites is their private oasis.
There, plunging through the healthy waist-high grass, we unreel our kites, feel them twitching at the string like sky fish as they swim into the wind. Satisfied, sun-warmed, we sprawl in the grass and peel Satsumas and watch our kites cavort. Soon I forget the socks and hand-me-down sweater. I'm as happy as if we'd already won the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize in that coffee-naming contest.
This ritual brings them joy, which is in short supply in their everyday lives. In fact, they find joy only in the company of each other. This is what makes the ending particularly poignant. Years later and away at school, when Buddy learns that his elderly friend has passed away, he looks up.
A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.
Their friendship and shared activity of kite-flying demonstrate their inextricable connection. Her death cuts him loose "like a kite on a broken string." The "pair of lost kites hurrying toward heaven" recalls their last Christmas together, when the lady declared as they watched their kites fly in the sky,
The Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are … just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.
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