Letter to Falcon

Dear Falcon (what a cool name),

For some reason I had the rare urge at work on Thursday morning to check the 9news.com website, and so I caught the breaking story about a 6-year-old boy on board an experimental aircraft drifting higher and higher into the air and away from his family’s Fort Collins home, with news and military helicopters in hot pursuit.

I kept an eye on the story throughout the next several hours, hoping desperately that you were okay and safe, and fearing the worst when I heard the news that the craft had landed, with no sign of you inside or nearby. Later in the day we all learned that you were alive and well and had been hiding in the garage attic of your house for the previous five hours, fearing your father’s anger about the escape of the untethered silver balloon.

Now we have what we call a media frenzy and you’re getting your “fifteen minutes of fame.” Some people are very angry with you and your family.

And Falcon, let me tell you right now that despite whatever crazy complications may end up being revealed about you and your family (and all families are complicated, by the way), my main response on hearing the truth continues to be great happiness and relief that you are safe and sound.

Questions are being raised—was this whole thing a hoax? Did your Mom and Dad talk you into it? I heard your father’s voice when he said, “he scared the heck out of us,” and I don’t think so. I think you were scared and you hid.

The whole thing made me remember a story from my own childhood when I was about your age. My Dad was well known in our small Indiana town for his eccentric hobbies, one of which was kite making. He handmade beautiful multi-colored box kites from tissue paper and balsa wood, and entered them in contests. Sometimes he also made gigantic kites, taller than he was. When he flew these very large kites they had quite a strong pull, and even a grown man had trouble hanging onto them sometimes. Dad would fly the kites for many days at a time and sometimes he even attached a small light before sending one up, and the kite would emit a mysterious, UFO-like glow after dark.

One windy day some neighborhood kids and I were curious, playing around the way kids do, testing the cord strength of the latest large kite which had been up in the air a record number of days. We were pulling on the line just a little and then letting it go to hear a certain very satisfactory twanging sound. But then, right before my horrified eyes, the nylon tether broke, and the kite fluttered loosely to the earth.

I knew my Dad would be very angry when he found out—so I climbed a ladder in the garage and hid up in the attic for a few hours. Unlike your own experience, no one really noticed my absence at all (back then kids were a lot less supervised than they are nowadays). Later, when my Dad came home and I got hungry for dinner I had to climb back down the ladder, get yelled at and face the music. And it’s hard to get yelled at by your Dad—anger and disappointment can be scary. Even when he was yelling, though, I pretty much knew my Dad loved me very much, and I’m hoping that’s true in your case too. Somehow, like the son of a guy from mythology called Icarus, you flew a little too close to the hot sun, the waxed wings your Dad made for you melted, and you fell to the earth—all from your dark little hiding place in the attic.

But this too shall pass, Falcon. Hang in there.