publisher rushes late edition to press after Daddy leaves early for race
Daddy had to leave the newsroom at 7 AM today to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon, where he was showered with high fives and flowers by a rogue spectator.
on a stroll with Mommy and Lala during workday, child addresses imaginary Daddy to be more inclusive
Sometimes, Kina slips and calls me “Mommy”, or calls Laurea “Daddy”, as she did yesterday—but now she allows herself the possibility of having a conversation with the invisible version of the missing parent. Is Air Daddy me? Is Air Daddy my mortal enemy? Let’s not find out.
for “Take Your Kids To Work Day”, Kina lays out her very own A1, writes opinion essay titled “Parents Should Not Have To Go To Work”
I am not sure what Kina liked most—the activities they scheduled for her at work, including exclusive interview opportunities with famous journalists, the morning bike ride to the office, or the chance to wear matching outfits with me in public. She spent the morning today interviewing Laurea about her job, so the activities must have made an impact. Journalism forever!
Upon correctly ID’ing Daddy, Child observes that “Mommy’s just not that hairy”; hairy-pheromoned Daddy objects
When I, a super-smeller, identified notes of burning rubber on Kina’s wrist, it led to a cascade of tears and apologies that lasted nearly twenty minutes.
daddy puzzled by soft-serve-averse gymnast; a highly unusual case!
One of Kina’s famous 4-hour fevers forced her to delay eating ice cream until after a nap. Also: her main beef with the first ice cream was that it was too crunchy.
Kina, born performer, holds up letter “A” in “EARTH” with gusto
Kina has developed a really charming habit of standing on stage while people applaud for group performances, just soaking it all up for herself. Give it up for “A”!
two families gather to give thanks for the woman who shepherded three babies into childhood; we eat cake—not too sweet
Hannah is probably the closest non-blood-related family that Kina has—or that I have, for that matter. She has raised this kid to be a fantastic human being in her own image, and I am profoundly grateful for her. She also shares a birth year with me, and so we spend lots of time complaining about various aches and pains and talking about how we like desserts that are not too sweet. Happy birthday to you, Hannah, and may your cake be none too sweet.
In section discussing whether dolphins are extinct, researcher notes, “It’s hard to say,” blames sharks for eating them
I hesitated to mention in this edition the kid who approached Kina and her other Asian-American classmate at gym class and just lobbed a mindbogglingly racist slur at them. I also hesitated before googling the specific linguistic formulation of this slur, and my stomach sank when no results turned up, because it suggested that this kid heard it from somebody, somewhere, who recited it from memory. I hesitated when she came home after school with Laurea and we sat on the couch to talk about it and tell her that we are bigger than the words the people use to hurt us; I hesitated as I considered what I wanted to tell her to do in the future—to tell an adult, sure, but to get in that kid’s face? To shout? To snarl? To spit? I hesitated before telling her she was strong, because I feel more conviction about the weakness of people who use these words, and the tragedy that little Asian girls have to be strong specifically to meet this weakness. I hesitated because the kid is also seven, and white, and has never had to hear his parents talk about being demeaned or passed over or dismissed because of the color of their skin, never had to see somebody who looked like them at work—somebody who has risen to the top of their field—called out by a senior leader not for their actual work but for the food eaten in the country of their birth. I hesitate to say that the kid might simply have found the language of the slur exciting and curious and was literally just telling Kina and her friend about the slur because he thought they might be interested to hear it—and because nobody, when it was said in front of him, suggested that it was a horrible thing to call a person. I hesitated to be angry yesterday, because Laurea was angry and I couldn’t afford to be angry. I was angry all day today, instead, unable to shake the memory of Kina telling me she got a couple math problems wrong “because the thing had happened just before and I couldn’t focus”. I hesitated to put this in the top slot because I think the dolphins are the thing that I want her to remember about yesterday, but at the end, I put it in the second slot, because I want her not to forget.
She’s fine. She’s safe. She has a good teacher and good friends. She has parents who are ready for this and who know it won’t be the last time. She loves dolphins, but it’s hard to say if they’re extinct.
Child turns to the kaleidoscope of her eyelids while she walks with Daddy to get the bike on a cloudy morning
She closes her eyes and tells me to let her know if anything is in her way. She walks alongside me and calls out the colors behind her eyelids: blue, violet, blue, burgundy. She turns left with me, and I tell her the the road ahead is straight and clear, and it is burgundy. Blue again, then left into the parking garage and down the ramp, violet.
Child peers into Daddy’s memories and reveals that he ate a cheeseburger for lunch, defying reason and mental science
Just a minute before this, I stunned her by guessing that she had eaten a beef patty for lunch. I have never seen her so gobsmacked, and it was almost a tragedy that I had to tell her I just looked at the school lunch menu. She would want me to tell you that she had no such study aid when she guessed, accurately, that I snarfed down a cheeseburger for lunch.
“Like, I would like to run fast but I want to slow down after“
Kina and I spent her entire bathtime playing out various wishes that could go awry at the hands of a nefarious magic mirror.
Wish you could run fast? What if you could never stop running fast? Best, instead, to wish that you could run fast “for just a little while and then stop.”
Wish you could hug Mommy forever? What if that meant you had to drag Mommy around to school and on hot days? Best to say you wish you could hug her “during certain times at night and she wouldn’t go back to her bed.”
attentive child reminds Daddy that she is, in fact, real
You know, it seems not really a good thing for my mental health that my kid has to tell me that she is “not an illusion”. She is right, though—I do love blue and green.
from toddler to teen, our publisher celebrates 1461 consecutive days of her marker-recorded life
When I was a kid, my dad had a manual typewriter that he kept in a room downstairs. This was obviously before computers and home-office electric typewriters, and it sat on his desk largely unused (as far as I could tell). There was one day, though, when I heard him clacking away at the keys, pushing back the carriage return and rolling the platen to release the paper—the first edition of a publication he had titled The Churchill Downs Bugle (after the street we lived on, not the horse race). It’s hard for me to remember, at this age, the specific headlines of that newspaper, and the issues that followed it, but I remember reading it over and over and laughing at his puns and the stories about me and my siblings. It felt special to see myself on a page—to see what my dad saw that was funny about me.
Almost four years ago, I joked with my dad that I had surpassed his output as a newspaper magnate, which was a bit unfair, as The Churchill Downs Bugle contained fully reported and written-through articles with actual jokes and was laid out (if I recall correctly) in two columns and was (absolutely) produced on a manual typewriter. By contrast, The Daily Kina is basically three headlines, a few illustrations, and several horizontal lines that suggest the existence of puns.
Nonetheless, The Daily Kina is inspired by The Churchill Downs Bugle in a way. The morning I wrote the first edition, I pulled out a sheet of pink construction paper and some of Kina’s crayons, and I wrote down the thing she had said to her mother just a few moments earlier: “YOU A CHEESE FIEND HUH”—a hilarious and extremely accurate observation. It was Friday, and it was quiet outside the house and quiet inside the house; a pandemic was raging, quietly, outside, and all the playgrounds were shuttered. We had run out of patience with Daniel Tiger (“A Grreat Show”) and I remember feeling the need to memorialize what was happening to Kina, who was only three and had no point of reference for how a reasonable Friday should feel.
Mayor of Williamsburg greets her many loyal young citizens
It’s kind of shocking how being in elementary school acquaints you with so many more human beings who live nearby. I have lived in this literal apartment for 24 years, and I don’t know that I’ve ever run into nine people I know in a single day in this neighborhood. Seven year olds are wild!
He taught her how to swim and will be sorely missed
Matthew, Kina’s swim teacher for the last several months, has not been around for the last five weeks or so. We knew he was an actor and in college, and we assumed that he was simply working on a gig or on the road, but when Laurea asked the lifeguard in passing when Matthew was coming back, her reply was, “He’s not coming back.”
This all happened within earshot of Kina, his most devoted fan, who immediately burst into tears. She has not bonded with either of Matthew’s steady replacements, who are less funny and more intense than Matthew had been. We think she had been counting the weeks until he would return, and learning that he would not return was too much for her to bear.
Laurea convinced her to hop into the pool for a bit, to blow some bubbles and give it a go with her new teacher, but she couldn’t stop crying and eventually asked to leave.
She is torn between wanting to stand put on North 5th and actually eating
It was too rainy to ride the bike, and the car was locked in the garage, and the L train wasn’t running. A literal perfect storm. Sorry, kid. This is how the pioneers did it.
Kid pits parents against each other in competition for free spa treatment; Mommy gets points for snuggling, while Daddy earns credit for when he is not a confused man
Let’s just say I’m not getting a spa treatment anytime soon.
She scorns the rude spider and cheers for the mosquito
I didn’t know what to expect from Storyville Mosquito when my brother invited us to see it, but I can assure you it is not what I would have expected, had I expected anything at all. It’s a beautiful puppet show, a sort of opera, a one-take film, and a chance to see Kid Koala play.
Thanks to Ken for the tickies; it was a real gas. Boo to the spider. Mosquito! Mosquito!
Child questions the nature of our shared reality while eating candy
This newspaper is proof that, if you listen closely enough, you will find that any given seven year old is likely pitching Inception to you in the living room after dinner.
It is clear to all listening that it is a show for first graders
Runa and Kina seem to know an awful lot about this show that they have clearly not watched in an extremely long time.
I misspelled “Gabby’s” in the headline, which is why the show name is in blue.
I have learned recently just how habitually I say “Yo!” in response to questions and how frequently I use the pet name “Bud” with both Kina and Laurea, and how both of them hate that so very very much. I am sorry to both of you; I seriously do not realize I am doing it.
The individual to be turned into chili here is the child, who eventually renegotiates terms on account of allegedly being undercooked
What I love most about this headline is that it is unclear who the chili is meant to be. Unclear antecedents are the best part of any headline—fight me. Anyhow, there is something vaguely appealing to me about getting snuggled for two hours and then turning into a fantastic pot of chili. It is, of course, equally appealing to stir Kina’s face for hours on end while she opines about life as a bowl of chili, but I didn’t get the snuggles, so moot point.
Oh hey it’s a Parade!
What I wish you could have seen in the production of today’s Parade is how Kina used it as a means of teaching Laurea how to draw roses. Also, the lily is fantastic.
