Daddy Heads Up Newsroom as Publisher and Asia Bureau Chief Cover Family Wedding

As the day approached for Kina and her mother to leave on a two-week trip to the Philippines, it dawned on me that I have never been apart from Kina for this long, for as long as she’s been alive. It then occurred to me that I have not been apart from Laurea for this long, for probably as long as we have been married. I have spent a lot of time with these people; it is strange to be alone.

Usually, when I take a trip away from Kina, whoever is left behind with her edits and produces The Daily Kina while I am gone. There have been outstanding stretches of this publication for which I can take no credit at all; Kina’s grandparents and Laurea have all carried the sacred pens a few times in the last five years. This is the first time that I’m doing TDK myself while I’m apart from Kina.

We’re ready for this; Laurea has shared with me a note from her phone with pictures and quotes and situations that I can draw on (no pun intended) for each of the next fourteen editions. There’s no shortage of material, and Laurea gets to enjoy the same little chuckles I do while writing things down for the next day’s edition. That makes me happy, just knowing that she can hear Kina’s strange muttering as she goes through her day. It’s a great gift.

But it feels a bit like I’m dreaming.

When she rolled off to JFK at 10 PM this Friday, I had the distinct sensation—a dream—that this is what it would feel like for her to move out of the house. This was a rehearsal for her growing up.

Whenever I try to imagine not doing these little newspapers, I audition different end dates in my mind, different ages at which it would be too intrusive or corny to write a newspaper about Kina’s day. Fourth grade? Ten years old? Twelve? Fifteen, for sure. Eighteen—I know I will not be drawing these things when she is eighteen. Some day between tomorrow and about ten years from now, I will stop drawing The Daily Kina. I will, by then (if conventional wisdom is to be believed) have too little insight into her day to come up with even a single headline—let alone three (and four on Sundays; thank you for your subscriptions).

Today is a rehearsal for not knowing, or not knowing directly. I have an inside source this time, but someday she’ll go to college and I won’t have that source. She’ll go to camp. She’ll visit a friend in another state. She’ll just not feel like talking about it. She’ll roll her eyes. She’ll call me back tomorrow.

I don’t particularly mind being alone. I am a pretty solitary dude, and I am extremely good at spending time with myself. Before she left, Laurea went to great pains to remind me how nice it would be to have that time with myself, and she’s right. I’m grateful for that.

I think the strange feeling that I am having is not about my being by myself, but rather about not being with them. I have been with them for nearly eight years now, from the moment I chased Kina to the NICU. I have felt at times like a bridge between these two people ever since that day, that I somehow willed things to be okay and now they are okay and as long as we are together it will stay okay.

And so I’m feeling a bit like a bridge untethered to land, reasonably stable and contented in the vastness of the ocean, but anxious that somebody, somewhere, needs a crossing.

Laurea used to go to the Philippines with her mother when she was young. She has fond memories of those trips with her mom—just the two of them going home to be with her mother’s mother and her father’s mother and her cousins and their mothers. The memories that Laurea has of home are memories of mothers, and I know it’s a big deal for her to be the mother now—to take that trip alone with Kina.

She is building her own new bridge to Kina, and Kina’s building her way, too. I know this is important, because I have heard about the teenage girls and their beleaguered mothers. I have heard about the snarking and the silence and the distance and the yelling and the mutual sense of utter frustration. Kina is nudging closer and closer to that age. Laurea and Kina need this trip; it is well timed.

And so, for the next two weeks, The Daily Kina will be published as The International Kina Tribune—an inside joke that only newspaper people will properly understand. I will do my very best to tell the story of Kina’s day, even though I am not there to see it. The story you will hear will be told by the mother who is there, in the city that gave her life. She is watching Kina live her own life. She is paying close attention.

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