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What does Buddy's friend discover after flying her kite on their last Christmas day together?

After they fly kites together on Christmas day, Buddy's friend has a revelation about the Lord in Truman Capote’s story “A Christmas Memory.” 


Buddy and his friend open presents with the rest of the family before escaping the disappointment and stuffiness of their home by going to the pasture to fly kites. The kites were the handmade gifts they shared earlier that day.  It is a beautiful afternoon with perfect blue skies and amazing kite flying winds. The two unwind in the deep grass with the afternoon sun shining upon them while simply enjoying each other’s company.


As they relax in the sun, Buddy’s friend realizes her belief that one would have to be near death to see the face of God may be flawed. She finds herself so taken with the idyllic afternoon that she decides the Lord shows himself in such perfection. He does not wait until the end of life, but he is present in life’s common, but precious moments. She explains her revelation to Buddy so he will understand how God presents himself in nature, and in the seemingly mundane, but wonderful moments of everyday life.



That things as they are"—her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—"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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