“Can You Please! Stop! Talking!”

Child is trying to go to sleep!

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.

dad