Kid and the other Maple girls build multi-layer, ranked-choice bus seating system for class field trip
Kina loves roasting the boys, who seem totally uninterested in which boys sit with each other on the field trip buses. Meanwhile, Kina has a five-level fallback for her bus partner and is excited to see the sea lions.
In other news, Kina’s school is doing a fundraiser, and while I haven’t taken a direct approach with you readers for helping to raise said funds, it is worth noting that the current mayor of New York City has made substantial cuts to public education in a system that supports over a million children. This has led to shortfalls at every school, and while I have very specific thoughts about mayoral control of the New York City Public Schools, the immediate impact is that parents are filling the gap.
How can you help? Glad you asked. I’ve decided that every paid subscription we get this month will go to Kina’s school as part of their Spring fundraiser. If you have not already (and please, Kina’s Lala, do not increase your monthly rate), you can head on down to the bottom of this here email and hit “Sign up for a premium subscription” and donate whatever you wish—even a dollar is fine. All subscriptions this month will go directly to Kina’s school and earmarked from “Readers of the Daily Kina”.
Child discovers one of the central struggles of identity
It must be odd, the first time you realize that you’ve never actually looked at your own real face, and that most of the time, the face you see is backwards from your actual face. I also still think about it all the time, and I’m 42 years older than Kina.
Sometimes I think this newspaper is just a safe way to talk about how being a kid is basically like being wildly stoned.
bedtime child lukewarm on Daddy’s heartwarming tale of Puppy going on a hilarious bender in San Francisco
I dunno, I just thought it would be funny to imagine her stuffed puppy out carousing in San Francisco circa 2018, after that one time we lost him on the playground in the Mission and I had to get another one express-delivered to our AirBnB, and Kina asked why he was so… clean.
They exchange notes on “clock time” and “event time” in an attempt to convince her to brush her teeth
As the most clock-oriented person in our household, Laurea often has a difficult time relating to the meandering flow of her roommates’ morning routines. Kina responds with frustration when Laurea tells her she can play for five more minutes before brushing her teeth, no matter how kindly her mother delivers the ultimatum. This often prompts Kina to simply start her dawdling anew, in an effort to reach whatever state of calm she was seeking in the first place—which just brings Laurea back to the timer, which restarts the whole process.
The other day, Laurea brought to me the notion of “clock time versus event time”, which seemed like a revelation to both of us in some ways but is actually a fairly well-documented differentiator of social structures.
In short, Laurea is on clock time—driven by schedules that are locked to a globally-agreed-upon and highly specific thing we invented and that Kina and I have never fully understood.
child deploys favorite new phrase of deep disappointment
What makes it extra funny is that she mutters “aw shoot” just milliseconds after she is disappointed, which suggests that she uses “aw shoot” when she already knows it’s gone south.
End of Spring Break means she gets to see Mr Ortiz
It has become something of a tradition for us to forget to plan an actual vacation during Spring Break, and this year was no exception. It is also typically the case, though, that Kina’s break is eventful and pleasant—and again, this year was no exception. She saw her little cousin Otis, her Lala, her Yeh-yeh and Grandma; she visited her Daddy’s real newspaper job; she gave me a high five at my first half marathon; she saw the Cloisters with Hannah; and she picked a bunch of tulips she ought not to have.
And despite all that action, she was thrilled to go back to school yesterday, if only to see her favorite teacher in the world, Ricky Ortiz, who celebrated his birthday just as his entire second grade class returned from the rest of the world (or, in Kina’s case, various local playgrounds). She had prepared for him an elaborate card with chocolates and modeling clay taped to it—things she said he would love, and when we dropped her off at the school gate, she bolted towards the gym as fast as she could, so that she could be the very first kid in line.
Kina is lucky to love school; not every kid gets it. I’m glad we have been able to instill a love for community and learning in her, but I have to give credit where it’s due. The teachers she’s had have been astonishing, inspiring, and loving; Mr. Ortiz stands tall among the giants, and Kina adores him. Thanks and Happy Birthday to Our Publisher’s favorite second-grade teacher. She could not stop talking about you.
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.
