Kina loves carousels. Her most beloved carousel, Jane’s Carousel, is temporarily inaccessible to us, for reasons of damaged ferry piers, and so we’ve really played up the Seaglass Carousel in Battery Park—a carousel she last rode apparently just before she could form resilient long-term memories. Because she can only barely recall the idea of a carousel made of giant fish, Kina has been really angling for a visit, attempting on Saturday to displace our beach plans for a visit to the heart of New York tourism. As a compromise, we agreed on Sunday, driving into the parking desert that is downtown Manhattan and hiking through the Financial District to Battery Park.

The tourists are back! It’s wild! People are all wearing foam Statue of Liberty hats, but no masks at all! We stood in line briefly as a dozen or so huge fiberglass fish twirled their way around their motorized pavilion, each occupied by a mildly disappointed tourist staring off into space. When the ethereal music finally stopped, all the fish simultaneously plopped to the ground, and the three attendants all screamed for people to leave the pavilion through the rear door. Then we got on.

The thing about Kina and carousels is this: She loves them so much that she cannot truly enjoy them once she’s on one. She spends the entire ride overwhelmed, contemplating the fact that she is actually on a carousel, soaking in the feeling of being on a carousel, uninterested in reflecting with us on her appreciation of that carousel. Kina rode in her fish, strapped to her mother’s lap, stunned and serious and unwilling to pose for photos. We twirled together for what felt like ten minutes, and the fish plopped down. The attendants screamed. We left.

Kina, like a marauding barbarian, derives great pleasure from chaos and dismantling empires. Because she is small and commands no real army, however, this predilection for destruction finds its most fulfilling expression at the beach, where Kina enjoys watching sand castles fall apart.

Unlike most children, who appear to enjoy building sand castles and protecting them from the elements, Kina instead asks me to do the work of building up a rampart near our spot on the beach; she has me run back and forth to the shoreline, carrying buckets of water so that I can empty them into the dry sand and load the packed beach back into those same buckets, casting rugged turrets that I then lay out in well-spaced formations to defend us from toddlers and childless twenty-somethings.

And then, silently, Kina smooshes them all. She walks the length of the castle and presses her foot into the top of each tower until it collapses into grainy clumps. Sometimes, she drags herself along the wreckage to smooth out any record of the castle that once stood in that place. Unlike Ozymandias, Kina has no intention of leaving a monument to her power; her rule is best remembered not by its architecture, but by the wake of its intentional erasure.

The wake-up time is still 6:24, and so at 6:24 every morning we wake, by which I mean Laurea and I wake, because Kina has usually already been awake for at least thirty or forty-five minutes—a part of Kina’s day about which Laurea and I, by definition, know very little. It is possible to infer a few things from the fossil record, though: She plays, because toys are out; she dresses, because clothes are out (and on her body); and she prepares, because every morning wake-up call brings with it a fully-formed plan for how she will spend her time with Laurea (often) or me (occcasionally).

Kina does not so much wake us as entertain us into consciousness, using a full arsenal of auditory and visual cues from her room. Some days, she brings her tiny flashlight. On others, she waves a long ribbon around. Today, she walked into our room with her Elsa radio, which plays exactly one song, “Into the Unknown”, from Frozen 2, at length and in snippets, both instrumental and vocal. It is also, thank god, festooned with various flashing blue lights—Elsa’s favorite color—that remind the listener to pay close attention to the small child singing along, in case they had forgotten.

Like a tiny Lloyd Dobler, Kina entered the room this morning with the radio held aloft, playing whooshing noises and showering the room with shafts of icy blue light. I can remember being her age and trying to imagine an experience (for Mother’s Day, say) that my parents might like; in hindsight, my taste was questionable, but what did I know of adulthood and sleep? Likewise, Kina had clearly put thirty minutes of deep thought into her inspired reveille, and she was fully committed to the bit.

I know I haven’t been writing long essays here for a while, but something tells me it’s not a wedgie headline that’s gonna fix that.

I love Kina’s little pool drawing at the bottom left, though. It looks almost like a oil painting, which is impressive, given the medium.

dad

Things I am proud of in today’s edition:

• The particular Pepe Le Pew-esque waftiness of Kina floating through the kitchen towards a hot wok full of fried rice, about which she sang a happy little song yesterday

• The accuracy of a tiny Mazda logo, which Kina will remember for the rest of her natural life, on the love letter from Mochi Appley The Family Car

• The gentle drape on the two layered sequined capes that Kina has conned her adults into purchasing for her (though the outfit pictured does not depict her real-life hoodie underneath—see also “This Outfit Is Sick!” from the July 18th edition)

• Kina’s vindictive pricing

Things of which I am less proud:

Little scamp demands respect, finds belly too hot to sleep, despite using pajamas as snuffly lovey.

dad

For the most part, I say “shit” when I am driving. A drunk guy on a Citibike emerges from between two random parked cars—shit. A car swerves in front of me—shit. Laurea merges into an exit lane more quickly than I expected—shit. All this, along with various stubbed toes, has given Kina some very specific insight into what you’re supposed to say when things go wrong (or nearly wrong).

So, lately, when things have gone wrong for Kina, she knows exactly how to respond. Spilled box of Legos—shit. Daddy stubs his toe—shit. Water tips over in the car—a quiet, whispered “shit”.

I don’t much care whether or why Kina curses, because “shit” isn’t really that powerful a curse, and these words are ultimately just words, but it’s notable that she’s discovered the power of this particular word, which I can tell because she never shouts it out loud, only ever uttering it sotto voce, like an incantation. “Shit” is a moment, not an event.

I nearly spent all my phone’s data plan on the effort, but we had a relatively Kina-calm drive back from Maine last night. As a result, our child is significantly better versed in the plot details of Princess Mononoke than she was last week, and I got back to the big city without pulling my hair out in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Thanks, Studio Ghibli and my unnamed but overpriced mobile carrier!

Today’s Parade depicts York, Maine’s Nubble Light, where we took nice pictures in the golden light after eating ice cream on Friday evening. Everything on land was drawn by Laurea, while our mother the sea was drawn by Kina.

One last edition from a vacation at the edge of the horizon.

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After a deliberate period of examination, Kina took nicely to her cousin Crew, who is nearly one year old. As a gesture of conciliation, she invited him to her favorite place in this vacation house—the creepy ping-pong basement, where even I fear to tread. She also fed him Cheerios, which was less creepy. He left safely, and Kina played ping-pong. All is well.

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I got obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence on the beach this morning and weirded out a horde of locals by drawing a giant sand spiral. Immediately afterwards, Kina ran the length of the spiral while singing “I’m a tanuki1” and instantly charmed everybody in town. We make a great team.

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The ocean was sleepy today, contented and loving. It was in a very sweet mood, though some might have found it chilly. This is how I like my ocean, and my people. Kina included.

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The pool is where I finally get to be Kina’s most beloved father, her preferred parent at last. If hypothermia weren’t an issue, I’d keep her there with me in the shallow end forever. It’s nice to be loved, but also slightly soggy.

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“River Shark” is a menacing and thrilling pool game invented by Andrew and Des. In it, the eponymous river shark gives its quarry a short head start in a race to the other side of the pool. As its prey paddles, the river shark sings its ominous head start song:

Don’t fall in! River shark!

Don’t fall in! River shark!

Don’t fall in!

Here I come!

Kina spent the first few games of River Shark in breathless terror, as I desperately swam away from Andrew on my pool float with her on my back. Then, she turned the tables, snarling and doggy-paddling her way around the pool in her floatie vest, threatening to eat everybody in the pool.

We’re up in coastal Maine for the next week, catching up on a missed year of beaches, lobster, ice cream, and family. It usually takes me five hours to get here, but we clearly weren’t the only people catching up yesterday, and Kina spent more or less the entire seven hours (save one hour-long nap) in bumper-to-bumper traffic asking us if we were in Maine yet.

The payoff, dear reader, is worth it. Expect shorter missives for the next week, but no fewer zingers and bon mots from our esteemed publisher and neighborhood lifeguard.

The Giglio Feast is one of my neighborhood’s most treasured traditions—a two-week festival surrounding the local Catholic church. The feast celebrates a Neapolitan saint who is said to have freed the children of his town from captivity at the hands of Turkish pirates—a miracle we celebrate by eating sausage and peppers, situating our children on extremely questionable carnival rides, and watching a few dozen local guys shoulder a giant flower-laden monument (the Giglio) and carry it down the street while a brass band plays the theme from Rocky.

The last time we did the Giglio thing was two years ago, which is also the last time the Giglio happened (because of the pandemic). We went with Kina’s friend Niki and his mom, and the kids fished for ducks on the midway, eventually scoring a plush donut and a plastic trumpet—which these two year old children tooted the entire walk home. This year, they did it again, officially making their own tradition inside the larger neighborhood tradition. Again, they fished for ducks. Again, they rode in circles on the carnival cars. Again, they watched the Giglio march down Havemeyer Street—this time, a smaller Giglio carried by the children of the same guys who would, a few days later, bounce the real tower around on their shoulders.

Niki and Kina don’t get to see each other so often these days, but they very clearly have the kind of friendship that can only be forged by newborns. Yesterday, we watched as they spun each other around on the teacup ride and drank lemonade together, each dressed in the official t-shirt of the Giglio Feast, ready to lift buildings on their shoulders side by side to the blaring roar of trumpets.

This is the third clown I’ve drawn in the last month. It’s mildly traumatizing.

dad

I seldom dream of moving to the suburbs, but I occasionally love to imagine that our decrepit pre-war apartment building goes co-op and I have big gobs of cash and buy like four apartments, breaking down walls and putting in floating staircases so that our house becomes a six-bedroom, four-bathroom mini-mansion with just one room that is not my bedroom in which I can put a real office chair that doesn’t slowly eat my lower back alive—all with the same scenic view of the margarita bar across the street, but from four times as many windows. Grandparents will visit! We can own bicycles! More than two people can join us for dinner! Most notably: In this palace, Laurea and I could put Kina to bed and then retire to a wing upstairs and far away, where we would have boisterous conversations and tell loud jokes and listen to Björk, all without fear of rousing Kina from her dream-filled sleep and having her scream at us to STOP! TALKING!

Until that day, Laurea and I will remain ensconced most evenings in our living room, fifteen feet from Kina’s open bedroom door, and whisper memes to each other until the kid falls asleep. This is family.

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I was all set with a different top headline today, but then Kina got mad at us for telling her to eat her yogurt and she lobbed this jewel right across the plate. We spent a solid ten minutes debating whether or not peeing on the street counted as pooing on the street. The house remains divided on the matter.

The masthead is Mommy’s four favorite colors. Good night.

dad

We go to the beach a lot more than we used to, both because we have a season pass for the beach at Jacob Riis now, and because Kina is more obsessed with the beach—and with swimming—than either of her parents are. So, yesterday, off to the stretch of sand east of Coney Island and west of the rest of the Rockaways, where we found an expanse of gentle waves in which to frolic.

One hour later, it was pure oceanic mayhem. Amateur swimmers being tossed in four-foot waves, the shore eroding under the force of an advancing tide, errant caps and sand toys everywhere. Just one month ago, I wrote here about losing my sunglasses in heavy waves at the very same beach. I did not detail how Laurea scolded me that day for wearing my sunglasses in the ocean, and how I ought to have thought about the possibility that one of the most powerful forces in nature might swipe my shades. My, how the tables turn.

Laurea and Kina, soaked to the bone, returned from the water to our beach tent, exhausted and laughing. Kina told a thrilling story about how they had survived being clobbered by a wave, and that Mommy’s own sunglasses, a pair of deadstock 90’s goldenrod Paloma Picasso frames that she had worn into the surf—despite my explicit warning not to—had been lost to the sea. This is not a roundabout way of telling Laurea “I told you so”; I am just telling all of you not to wear sunglasses into the ocean when the tide is high, and to learn from our many optical mistakes.