Answer: the image the poet paints of the woman's children is that they pull her back. The woman wants to be free as the kite and as she says in the poem
"Kicks off her chappals, tucks up her kurta so she can run with it,
light flecking off her hair as when she was sexless-young, Up, up
past the puff-cheeked cloud" . Meanwhile, her children, her marriage and life were tugging her back.
Explanation:
The most accurate perception of this poem can only be grasped by reading the poem. Find attached below the poem, woman with the kite written by Divakaruni.
Meadow of crabgrass, faded dandelions, querulous child-like voice. She takes
from her son's disgruntled hands the spool of the kite that will not fly.
Pulls on the heavy string, ground glass rough between her thumb and finger. Feels the kite, translucent purple square, rise in a resistant arc, flapping against the wind. Kicks off her chappals, tucks up her kurta so she can run with it,
light flecking off her hair as when she was sexless-young, Up, up
past the puff-cheeked cloud, she
follows it, her eyes slit-smiling at the sun. She has forgotten her tugging children, their give me, give me wails. She sprints backwards, sure-footed, she cannot
fall, connected to the air, she
is flying, the wind blows through her, takes her red dupatta, mark of marriage.
And she laughs like a woman should never laugh
so the two widows on the park bench stare and huddle their white-veiled heads
to gossip-whisper. The children have fallen, breathless, in the grass behind.
She laughs like wild water, shaking her braids loose, she laughs
like a fire, the spool a blur
between her hands,
the string unraveling all the way to release it into space, her life, into its bright weightless orbit.
