You hear the phrase, “Go fly a kite,” and you think someone is telling you to get lost, stop wasting their time, go waste your own time instead. That is not how Teresa sees kites. For her, the phrase isn’t so much a not-too-polite suggestion of what you should do with yourself as an earnest plea or even, when the weather is nice, demand. “Mom, when can we fly my kite?” “Mom, can we fly my kite today?” “Mom, I got my kite. Can we go to the park and fly it?” “Mom, let’s go fly my kite. Please?” So when the weather is nice (i.e., above freezing) and suitably breezy, we pull Teresa’s kite out of the closet and head for the park. She has a neat little nylon kite, a gift from her grandmother that has the virtues of being easy to both fly and fold into its carrying case, so it has survived more than a full kite-flying season. We get to practice the virtue of patience when we pull it out and have to spend a few minutes untangling and straightening the lines. It really doesn’t take too long, but when it’s time to fly kites and you’re 5 years old, any time is too long. Then, unless there really is a stiff breeze, Teresa and I take turns running through the park, towing the kite behind, until it picks up a draft and works its way up 20 or 30 feet. There it dances in the sun, against the blue sky or the clouds, until the wind dies and the kite falls. There are all kinds of scientific lessons you can learn from a kite. Someday soon Teresa will probably hear about Benjamin Franklin discovering electricity thanks to a wet kite string and a key, although that oversimplifies matters a bit. There’s also the strength of the air pressure — which you can’t see — holding the kite — which you can see — up in the sky. It makes it easier to understand that while the air around us might look like nothing but empty space, the atmosphere that allows us to breathe is far from a vacuum. There are so many things that are real and true and invisible, just like the air holding the kite aloft. There’s also Teresa’s psychological experiment on how many times she must ask, using which words and what tone of voice, to get me to stop what I’m doing and take her to fly her kite, and my observation of how many times we can get the kite up in the air and watch it bob and weave and fall before she decides to put the kite away and adjourn to the playground before heading home. Next time you have a free afternoon, and you notice that it’s a bit windy, take my advice: Go fly a kite.