Kina and Niki Show Renewed For Another Season

We drove out to Long Island yesterday to meet up with one of Kina’s oldest friends, Nikola. Kina has known Niki since she was only a few weeks old; I have photos of the two newborns—a tiny Kina nestled next to the relatively enormous Niki, each on their back, staring in fascination at the ceiling of his mother Melica’s apartment. Laurea has known Mel a little bit for a long time, an acquaintance who’s popped up nonchalantly in various corners of our lives over the years. It was only natural, then, that when Laurea and I told our friends at my birthday party in 2016 that Laurea was pregnant, Mel was there. And it was not terribly surprising to find that she was also expecting, a month before Laurea. They have since become really good friends, and their relationship both mirrors and explains Kina and Niki’s friendship.

The kids grew up together going to the local street fair, swinging in the bucket swings, blowing bubbles, visiting each others’ houses, celebrating each others’ birthdays in the same lumberjacky Brooklyn bar, and even spending their first year of school in the same classroom. But it was in the midst of that first year, unfortunately, that a pandemic blew into town, and Mel—who had the opportunity to move into the house of a family friend in the Hamptons—made the tough call to pack up her apartment and her kid and left town. We’ve kept in touch since, talked on the phone, seen them briefly when they stopped back in Brooklyn to pick up things, but the kids hadn’t really had the chance to cut loose for over a year. It was like a spigot had suddenly been shut, the most dramatic separation any of us really experienced last year.

With all the adults vaccinated, though, we decided it was time to reopen the tap. We rented a hotel room, piled Kina into the car, and drove out yesterday morning. Mel had kept the specifics of our visit a secret, and Niki was stunned at our arrival. As their parents tentatively unwound with each other, Kina and Niki just caught up. For the subsequent twenty-four hours, the two kids reclaimed every lost play date and every missing word. It was the most life-affirming and joyous encounter I’ve seen in a very long time, and it was a thrill to watch (from our chairs in the backyard as we drank wine).

They defended a stump from marauding adults by waving sharp sticks at them. They ran, squealing, around the property line of Niki’s house. They discovered a cache of Pez in a closet and ate dozens of them, like barbarians, without even placing them into a dispenser. They hid a basket of freshly-folded clothes that Mel even now has not found. They dug shallow holes in various beaches. They ate the frosting off two enormous cupcakes. They sat underneath a tarp on the seashore and played pretend. They talked, at length and privately, to one another about topics only they know. They embraced. They cackled.

And when we parted ways, the two of them mourned each others’ departure, with Kina muttering in the back seat of the car, “I miss Niki.” We reassured her that we’d visit again, and that Niki would find some reason or another to visit Brooklyn, and they could have the “indoor play date” in our home that both of them craved so desperately. We miss Mel, too, because of all the shared drama of early parenthood, of our lives transforming, of the anxiety of abandonment our kids (and, if we’re being honest, we) felt at school drop-off, and of raising our three-year-olds into four-year-olds in the midst of terrifying uncertainty. We all miss each other, but we all feel some comfort that the signature friendship of our kids’ lives will prompt the occasional trip out east (or west) for the foreseeable future—regardless of whether or not the trips someday get short(er).

It’s not entirely clear that Niki and Mel will come back to the city, and I honestly wouldn’t blame them; spending a day two blocks from the beach taught me a lot about the benefits of Long Island, relative to a life across the street from a margarita bar in Williamsburg. I don’t know that I could live out there for the long haul, but I’m not sure that I can make the strongest argument for living here, either, and as long as these two kids can live in each others’ orbits, close enough for them to feel the gravity of their friendship, I’ll be happy that they’re happy. It’s the kind of relationship we all wish we had—and that maybe some of us do, or did. A friendship you’d pick up a sharp stick to defend, and a love to grasp onto with all your might.

Today’s Parade is a rare signed edition that depicts four “special and precious” seashells underneath a brilliant sunset, just like the one Kina and Niki saw on the beach last night, as they tossed sand into my face with shovels.

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