Every once in a while, your brain gets a little wingly, and that’s why you get super whiney at lunch with your dad’s good friends in Philly, foiling any potential observation on their part of your extremely sophisticated demeanor. Later, as you ride home, your wingly brain will ask you why, after such a long drive, you are still not yet in Brooklyn. Your wingly brain will insist that you join it in asking your father—who is navigating bumper-to-bumper traffic—that question, and you will concede. Once home, you will nibble briefly on a dumpling and claim that you are full. When your parents ask you why you are not eating, you will blame your wingly brain. Your mother and father will carry you to bed and tuck you in, all of you exhausted from a long trip away, and you will sleep like the baby you still are, to wake the next day with a refreshed brain and a ravenous hunger. Your parents will not hold your wingly brain against you, because they have spent many days of their lives with similar brains, and they hope their parents don’t hold it against them. We make space for each other’s wingly brains, because it is the human condition. Someday, you will make space for somebody else to be wingly, and you will quietly tell them that we are all so, so close to Brooklyn.

dad