The summer before my father died, my wife and I took a strange vacation to Galveston with my parents. My father mapped out every single day as he never had during childhood trips—jam packed with boat tours, museums, seafood restaurants, jet-ski adventures— as if he could make up for every speck of lost time here, now, all in the span of five days.

More than anything however, he wanted to fly a kite. An entirely new aspiration. Nevertheless, we popped into a beachside store full of them. More kites than I had ever seen; the sharp smell of plastic dizzying. Sometimes my father had a real boyishness about him; at times it scared me, and at others, amused me. That day, I relished the way his eyes pored over the colorful array of kites that covered every inch of the store. Hanging from the ceiling, lining the walls, layers and layers of them. Massive and tiny, box kites, delta kites, diamond kites, a whole menagerie of animal-shaped kites, some with wings, others with tails and streamers in every color imaginable. Of all the options in the store, he chose an unimposing medium-sized delta kite—yellow, orange, purple, dusty blue, and green—with a strong black crown and a long tail packaged and ready for assembly.

On the morning of our last full day in town, I agreed to wake before dawn. We journeyed to the sand together as the sun lifted its head among the clouds. The wind whipped our hair into strange parts and the waves crashed like applause into the sand. I ran with the kite to pick upwind and soon realized my father could not follow. His knee would not cooperate. He stopped in his tracks and massaged his leg, urging me to go on. I felt ever more determined to push the kite into flight. I ran a jagged line into the sand once more and released the string in my wake. At last, the stingray-shaped fabric with its colorful tail sailed through the air. From many feet down the beach, I caught my father’s tilted smile.

I wonder now if flying that silly kite was the best embrace I could have given him.