My father taught me to tie a kite.
Not fly it — tie it. The knot that fixes the string to the frame, the way you test the tension, the small adjustments that determine whether the kite pulls left or right. He was particular about this. A kite that is tied wrong will fly badly no matter how good the wind is. I understood this as a child because he told me. I understood it properly as an adult because I tied a kite wrong and it flew badly.
Last January, I bought a kite for my daughter.
She is seven. She wanted to fly it immediately. I sat her down on the terrace and said — first we tie it.
She was impatient. She had her mother's face and her grandfather's impatience, which he had when he was young and lost somewhere in his seventies.
I showed her the knot. She tried it. It was wrong. I showed her again. It was wrong in a different way.
We sat on the terrace for forty minutes, just tying the kite, the kite not yet in the air, and she was frustrated and I was patient in a way I have learned from years of not being patient.
On the fifth try, she got it.
She looked up at me and I saw something in her face that I recognised — the specific satisfaction of having understood a thing that resisted you.
We flew the kite for an hour. It flew well. Straight and steady, pulling at the right angle.
My father would have said nothing. He would have watched the kite and nodded once and that would have been everything.
I said nothing. I watched the kite and nodded.
My daughter was already looking at the sky.
