Kid Has Lived So Many Places

Speaking very literally, Kina has not lived in so many places, though I grant that her definition of “to live” is expansive—to include places in which she was born, places inhabited by the people she loves, places she has heard of, imaginary places ruled by She-Ra, outer space, and the city where she actually lives. At breakfast this morning, after her careful recitation of homes, Laurea and I responded with all the places we had lived. As a military brat, I had a lot of examples: Miami, Boston, Upstate New York, Ohio, Virginia, Oklahoma (“Ok-la-hoooooo-ma???? Ha! Ha!” said Kina), Germany (“Whoa!”), Upstate New York Again, and Brooklyn. Laurea clocked in with three: Manila, California, Brooklyn.

Though Laurea and I spent the first halves of our lives in various state of relocation, we have lived in this Brooklyn apartment for nearly twenty years, and we have no immediate plans to change that. What does it mean to raise a kid in a place? I have no idea, other than that I assume she may start and graduate elementary school with mostly the same kids and develop a more opinionated accent than I ever did. Laurea and I do want Kina to be worldly (a term that is more than a little loaded and definitely borderline colonizing), but it’s hard to say that either of us want to move anywhere in our adulthood near as much as the two of us did as kids. I took a step the other day towards admitting that we’re going to be here, in this apartment, for a while, when I measured Kina against the door frame of our kitchen and marked her height in pen. I’ve been afraid to commit to staying somewhere with her, without considering whether or not it even mattered. I don’t really care how many places she lives, as long as we have a family and a home together—a lesson I think my parents tucked away for me as our family moved around.

In a way, I think Kina has it right. She does live in California and Virginia (understanding that she could stay in her grandparents’ houses for the rest of her life if she wanted to). She does live in Etherea for most of the day—and certainly whenever She-Ra is on. And, while South America is perhaps a stretch, I think we can all agree that the lot of us live in space, if we’re being really honest about things. I hope we can be here, together, for a while.

I am incredibly proud of my bacon logo, which came to me like a bolt from the blue. It borders on “tasty-looking”.

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