"Johnny's Kite" Watercolor. Dedicated to my Father

 

Has there been something that you loved passionately as a child that you kept on loving until adulthood?

When I was younger, I surely loved my toys and cartoons. (Voltron, He-Man, She-Ra, Jem) I couldn't wait to grow older and make money so I can buy as many toys as I wanted and watch cartoons as much as possible. Now that I am making money, sadly, I dont have the same lust for toys anymore. I even rented season 1 of Voltron on Netflix, only to find that I didn't love it anymore. Maybe, only in a nostalgic way, but you'd have to strap me down to a chair to force me to watch Voltron. Holy crap it's a bad show. I guess what I'm getting at is that your passion for certain things fade as you get older, which brings me to my father.

My dad loved kites as a kid. He designed the best kites, and flew them higher than anyone. He loves the wind. He brags about how long he can keep a kite in the air. When he got older he helped my grandmother with the family business, a printing press. In the Philippines, we had frequent electrical black-outs that were hurting the business tremendously. He designed a windmill and built it to generate electricity for our factory. His ingenuity kept the business going. He still refines and redesigns windmills for fun.

A perpetual wind-chaser, My dad, my husband and I once drove 3 hours looking for a wind farm that he passed by on a trip a while ago. I think what we did was called trespassing, hanging around gigantic windmills in some part of California. We didn't do anything. We just hung out, watching the windmills turn. My dad was like a kid.

My dad's current project now is trying to figure out how to combine kites and windmills because the windspeed at higher altitudes is exponentially larger.

I think it's incredibly neat that a kid who flew kites as a kid, can grow up to be an inventor of windmills, and someday maybe the kite-windmill. I'm sure it is incredibly hard to hold on to a childhood passion and turn it into something wonderful someday. My dad's eyes still glimmers with child-like enthusiasm on windy days.

 Hope you had fun reading about my dad, who I love and respect so much!

Tiffanny