Tight quarters here. We make do.

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Kina’s first-grade teacher is also the Drama teacher, and I’m pretty sure, based on Kina’s reaction to watching all the kids in school sing Elsa music, that Kina and Ms Hart will have a long and fruitful friendship.

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It’s actually not a bad deal. Surprise parties are fun to throw.

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Our esteemed publisher woke promptly at six thirty, whirling with excitement for our first beach trip of summer—joined by several friends and their families. What our publisher did not do, however, is check the wind forecast.

Despite the ensuing offshore gale and a full suite of airborne tents and umbrellas, Kina and her crew stayed at the shore for four hours. Sand was everywhere! Goosebumps were pervasive! And yet—nobody takes our beach from us, no how.

It’s rare that the water is more comfortable than the sand at the end of May, but she and I spent a good while underneath the choppy waves, where our nerve endings slowly shut down and we dunked with glee. Emerging, however, caused no end of drama for Kina, as noted in our second headline. The suffering she will endure—and which she will drag her Sea Parent into—for love of the ocean knows no bounds.

These shoes may well literally have been designed for Kina. They are her single most prized possession right now.

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Loyal Readers! Look to the bottom of this electronic mail missive for a drawing challenge that will call on you to deliver world-class cuteness! You might love it! You might scoff! The kitty is undeniably cute!

“What are your plans for Memorial Day weekend?” they ask. “Are you traveling?” they ask. “Will you stumble into another group of tangentially-related children and go with them into a large canoe floating in Brooklyn’s second-most-famous poop canal? Will you row out into the East River, where the mouth of the Newtown Creek is shockingly vast? Will you learn that massive barges still ply the waters of the canal, despite the presence of two unassuming canoes floating back and forth from said mouth of said canal to the cacophonous shade under the Pulaski Bridge? Will you dodge lumps of poop and admire the geese? Will you sustain a mild sunburn on the tops of your thighs? Will you watch as your six-year-old daughter, three seats in front of you, rows in concert with the volunteer coxswain? Will you hear her moaning about how much she wishes she could be hanging out with her friend Futura, who is sitting directly behind her and also moaning? Will you wash your hands thoroughly?”

PAUSE GAME!

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Kina, her mommy, and I all had a great morning drawing newspapers with her classmates for Family Friday, where the day’s news mostly revolved around baseball games, Connecticut, and food. After the kids had drawn their front pages, we read them all to the class, shouting extra! extra! with each new headline.

There was, surprisingly, only one top headline about poop, which I decided belonged in the Science section. Somebody’s top headline was about their uncle. Most impressively, one paper was all about how somebody’s family had come to Family Friday to do newspapers and by the way there were going to be healthy snacks; I gave that editor a hug and a kiss, and I told her I’d see her at home.

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Late to send, but no less satisfying, if only so you can learn that Kina thinks Alexandra is a “shady name”. Sorry to all Alexandras.

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I did my best to capture Kina’s glory this morning. She got the memo.

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Kina’s reading skills have improved dramatically this year, in a breathtaking sprint that now has her revisiting the hundred or so books we’ve spent her entire life reading to her. Among those books is my favorite of all time: Where the Wild Things Are.

The first time I mentioned Where the Wild Things Are was in September of 2020, as a mid-page headline on an issue otherwise dedicated to Kina’s “rage tutu”. We have read this book, in the last three years, countless times. I take great joy in reading it to her. Before we had Kina, when I imagined being a dad, the vision I had was of myself reading Where the Wild Things Are to my future kid.

What I did not envision was that she would someday read it to me, as we all sat on the living room floor late in the evening. I did not imagine that I would hear my own child sound out the word “mischief” (of one kind and another). I did not see what it would look like as she turned the pages. Now I know.

This is not technically Kina’s first recital, which occurred inexplicably less than a year ago and yet feels profoundly distant in my memory of the event. This was, however, the first time Kina has had a recital in a place that could not be reasonably called “Sloane’s living room”. It is also the first time Kina has performed as part of a corps de ballet to the accompaniment of the Beach Boys’ classic hit, “Surfer Girl”. Given the musical selection, it was surprising that surfing didn’t play a larger role in the choreography. It is, however, not surprising that I have had “Surfer Girl” in my head for the entire day today.

Brava, prima.

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With the annual Dance Parade washed out, Kina turned to her friend Runa for a little day on the town in more sheltered environs.

Learned: Malls just suck for kids—or at least the small number of malls in New York City.

Learned: The kids will nonetheless make their own fun.

The kid has taken up the mantle of house scientist, with a focus in bubble dynamics.

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Before I say this, I want to make perfectly clear that nobody should have a child to make themselves feel better; in that general direction can be found countless hours of therapy—for children and their parents both.

HOWEVER:

There is something profoundly comforting about the rush of oxytocin we get from looking at Kina after a hard day. The overwhelming sense of love and adoration, held up next to the adrenaline of conflict or stress, carries with it a strange sense of purpose. Everything takes on greater meaning when you’re hugging a six-year-old; it has to.

I think when people who do not live in New York imagine what it must be like to raise a child here, they have a vision of a reeling anonymity that deprives humans of meaningful community. Those people do not understand neighborhoods.

In the fifteen minutes it took us to walk to dinner at one of our favorite slice joints last night, Kina recognized five people, waving to them offhandedly from across streets, in the middle of intersections, and while perched on a plywood bench eating pizza. Most—but not all—were under the age of eight.

This wasn’t even on a weekend, or on a playground!

If only we had a piazza.

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Okay, so, good news: kitty scientists.

(and Dog Bader!)

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Kina spent at least twenty minutes yesterday peppering us with Would You Rather scenarios (a confirmation that this is in fact my very own daughter), but all of the options were between something gross and some horrible way to die, which meant that we were continually signing up for things like “living in a vat full of poo forever” or “always eating mustard”. A real grind, but better than the alternative.

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It stands to reason that this critically-esteemed publication would not exist without Kina. It is further true that without her mother, Laurea, Kina would not exist. By the transitive property of progeneration, then, The Daily Kina is really in many ways a story of Laurea.

I try as often as I can to make sure Laurea’s story is told here as much as mine is. (Kina, of course, gets top billing, but she is the publisher and gets that prerogative.) There are many days when I sit down in the morning to write and ask Laurea, “Is there any news?” She never fails to miss a scoop. Because of that, the news you see in these pages is not just told by Laurea but is also a version of Kina’s life through Laurea’s eyes—and in that you see a picture of who Laurea is.

As Kina gets older, we see her mother shining through her in new and exciting ways—when she lays out her clothes in a chic and flat version of herself on the floor, for example, or in defense of her friends on the playground (which makes her parents unspeakably proud to hear about). Kina is undeniably her mother’s daughter—the spitting, sometimes infuriated image.

It feels like Kina has finally gotten over the sting of not being the baby of the family, and she’s willing to admit that this Otis kid has something going for him.

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Sometimes the questions get eerie, but it’s also the case that I haven’t really thought about orphanages in a long time, and it gave me something to look up on Wikipedia.

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It’s just mommies all the way back.

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Kina asked me to tell her a secret yesterday, explaining that its security was guaranteed by the fact that our dreams wash out all the memories of the day before by the time we wake up. I’m not sure whether this is a great idea or a horrible idea, but it reminds me of one of the ways I coped during the tedium and crisis of the early pandemic: I would wake up each day and pretend that I was a brand-new soul, assigned to David’s body while he slept. I would have all David’s memories and the physiological responses to whatever had happened to him the day before, but I could see the problems of his life from a bit of a distance, knowing that I had just one day to try to make them better—and no particular stake in the matter. This worked surprisingly well, if not for the disposal of unpleasant memories and thoughts, then at least for helping to dissipate their emotional trauma. I like the image of my brain taking out the trauma trash every night, making a tidy little nook to hold the wonder and frustration of a new day.

I didn’t tell Kina the secret, by the way. She’s horrible at keeping them.

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Just tearing away all her childhood fantasies, one truth at a time.

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Even for Kina, this was a lot of face painting (most of it done by friends, with eye shadow). I wasn’t even sure we could get it all off by the end of the day, but here we are now, all fresh-faced and having fun.

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Pulled reluctantly from her rapt viewing of the coronation yesterday, Kina spent the rest of her Saturday walking around the city with us—a family ritual that long predates her arrival on the scene. Starting from 29th Street, where we ate a lunch of pasta and salad, we made our way to the Madison Square Park playground (with its legendary tire swing), to the base of a statue for some drawing (a couple of excellent portraits and landscapes in pencil and ink), down Broadway to Union Square (where she yelled back and forth with me into one of the city’s only working playground pipe intercoms), down the sidewalks of University Place to Washington Square (where she inquired about the many weed vendors), through the Village to Morgenstern’s Ice Cream (for a scoop of strawberry with sprinkles), across the street to what Kina calls the “Tanuki maze” (a painted labyrinth that is perfect for chasing), and across town for dinner at one of our favorite Thai restaurants.

All of this travel was by foot—to the tune of roughly five miles, eventually. Whose feet? Depends on how closely you were watching.

You could not have planned the first British coronation in over seventy years more appropriately to coincide with Kina’s fascination with gowns, crowns, and assorted regalia. She found a lot of the talking boring, but she gave high marks to the myriad scepters and swords.

God save the Kina!

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A real bag of chuckles, this one.

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You want to see those napkins? Enjoy.

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Imagine being six, not yet a decade old, and knowing that something has been around longer than you’ve been alive. A decade is unfathomably long to her—the equivalent of eighty years for me. To me, a decade is a bit less than a fifth of my life. It doesn’t feel so far off today from 2013, when Obama was president and Lorde released “Royals”…. Maybe it does. Maybe it’s forever. Can you believe it?

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I would give anything to sleep so deeply that all your memories of your conscious life and family are knocked straight out of you, and you wake up to a world unfolding with mystery—like being born fresh every single morning.

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This whole edition is basically about an extremely rainy Saturday in Brooklyn and what you end up having to do about it, and realizing you know at least two other families in the same situation. At least we all got to talk, eventually.

It’s been a long time since I took the reins of the Parade, but here we are. The wax-resist watercolor pieces are 100% by Kina, but the giant PARAdE is by me.

Kina loves many things, but princesses and puzzles are both up there. Thanks to her teachers for letting her borrow this book.

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Laurea spent all morning teaching Kina radio etiquette just so we could walk to school saying “go for mommy” into our sleeves.

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The Book of Losers is a massive tome. Keep your noses clean, readers.

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I wrote a thing about not-best-friends last year that I still really like, because it explores the concept of a friend-for-the-moment—a kind of friend I really love and have come to accept that I’ve become accustomed to, having grown up in a lot of different places and built up countless ephemeral friendships. I don’t know what that says about me as a friend in general, or what it must be like to be my friend when your experience of friendship carries with the kind of commitment that requires ranking and competition. I have a few friendships I value tremendously, but I have no best friend, and I’m cool with that.

Is that somehow akin to this idea Kina has of “backup friends” at school—a designation she’s given to almost every friend she has had since kindergarten? Maybe; it feels like it. These friends all know slightly different Kinas, as my friends all know slightly different Davids. Those Davids are “backup Davids” in a way—the Davids at the edge of other people. Kina’s just taking the other view, that these people are all there to meet a different edge of her.

Kina has tremendous fun with all her backup friends, and they all rub different edges of her as they pass through. They are (as I wrote last year) the running friend, the new home friend, the shoes friend, the friend to talk to at lunch, the falling-down friend, the parkour friend. They move in and out of focus, pass by at school dropoff, walk through the gates with Kina—who is at equal ease with each of them as they stroll across the yard. Together, they make up her collective best friend, who was never missing to begin with.

It has, according to our esteemed publisher, been like this since the very first day of school. A vibrant bazaar, full of unreasonable bartering.

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We honestly had planned to take Kina to the movies long ago, but, you know, global pandemic.

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Yesterday, was, in fact, a fairly ordinary day, when measured against all the many days that I have lived. Gymnastics—check. Playground—check. Family time—check. Car nap—well, okay, some of it was unusual, but this falls into the category of Days We Have Known.

But for Kina, it was special. Her mother was back in town, she was able to visit the Japanese grocery in Industry City. While there, she was able to spend time with her whole New-York-based family, including her tiny cousin Otis. She did a flip. She took a nap.

I think back to when I was small, sometimes, and marvel at the myriad little sacraments that made up my otherwise normal life. Talking to robins in the trees, libraries with carpeted conversation pits, spaghetti and meatballs. Everything that was happening for me, in my life, was a secret joy. Secret, in that only I could feel and see and hear it for the first time—the robins, the soft carpet, the impossibly deep snow.

Mommy’s back after a long and rewarding week of work, and this delightful daddy-daughter week makes its gentle, satisfying exit.

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At the end of the day, I wasn’t really that suspicious at all.

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Kina stopped waking us up at night (again) several weeks ago, but she clearly hasn’t stopped waking herself up at night from time to time, as evidenced by her impromptu couch nest from this morning—allegedly assembled “halfway through sleeping”, as one does.

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When the cat (Mom) is away, the mice (Dad) will play (drop Kina off at the actual schoolyard, instead of at the opposite corner, and also stand and wave for two minutes as Kina backs away from him across the yard, gesticulating lovingly throughout).

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Kina, like many small children, tends to get a lot of scrapes and bruises in the course of navigating the world at top speed. I’ve grown accustomed to discovering abrasions when I give her a hug after school, or seeing a wine-red contusion on her shin after a day in the playground. In the moment, these injuries are naturally a giant drama, but the pain passes after a while and we move on.

This is a metaphor for life.

At Futura’s birthday party on Saturday, Kina took a spill while chasing after some boys, and another parent escorted her back to me with a concerned look and a full first-aid kit. Kina sobbed on my shoulder as I asked her to tell me where she’d gotten hurt, pointing at the most likely points of impact. Head? No. Knees? No. Stinky feet? No (chuckle, sob.) Elbow? Nodding head.

It is very important to me that I know how to do Kina’s hair. This concern dates back to July 5, 2020, when haircuts were not viable and all of us looked like Zoom neanderthals, and I got to watching lots of videos about curly hair, which Kina has in spades. From this particular pandemic research rabbit hole, I eventually came to realize that the smooth move for little kids with type-2B hair is to pull that mess together into some braids. And as a man who really, really wants to show up for the women in his life, I decided to be braid dad.

Let me tell you, other dads: This is not as easy as it sounds.

I have spent, intermittently, much of the last three years experimenting with brushing, pulling, gathering, wrapping, pinning, and—yes—braiding Kina’s hair, with very limited success. It has been humbling. Hairs out of place, loose and wobbly braids, poorly-placed ponytails—I have run the gamut of follicular abuse, and I have strived to be better. For that, I turn to my role models.

I’ve been thinking a lot about who we’ve become, which is connected somewhat to the question of who we have been. Some of that—without spending too much time diving into this—is how money has undermined our hard-wired intrinsic reward systems about giving gifts. The idea that pre-economic, post-monkey humans were somehow exchanging finite supplies of beaver pelts for finite supplies of literally everything else a single human being needs to survive seems inefficient at best; these societies have to have been built on the foundation of communal sufficiency, contribution, and gratitude. We’re not out here running around feeling a primal sense of joy when we pick out gifts or see them sitting under a tree for nothing. We are hard-wired to show up for each other and keep each other alive.

That’s the monkey.

What I worry about, instead, is what replaces that monkey: A zero-sum game of power and control that leverages scarcity for influence, that incentivizes hoarding, that creates myths about superiority and rifts in culture. The people out there who claim that life is nasty, brutish, and short—who preach the cult of the alpha wolf and prep to be the last ones standing on Earth or the first ones standing on Mars—are telling us a story about the market-based past that is self-fulfilling. Money, the abstract container of value, which can’t feed any of us or keep us warm, is driving our evolution to our worst possible selves.

Laurea’s on the road—Kina’s Event Parent—and we get a little solo time together here at TDKHQ for the next week. We would have celebrated with cupcakes, but the store that Kina spotted the cupcakes in was actually a soap store. Who’s out here bathing with cupcakes? This neighborhood.

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I mean, we are all equally baffled by the size of her feet. It is a collective puzzlement.

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It was 90 degrees in Brooklyn today, and while the scuttlebutt on the playground was that the water-spurting turtles were on, they were dry as a bone by the time Kina arrived at the scene. A climate reminder: It is not yet halfway through April.

For a little more context on the turtles, and the equity of water features in New York City, a couple prior editions for you to peruse on your fire escapes, or with your face firmly planted in front of a dusty box fan in the window: