It has been a crazy long weekend, and yesterday was a particularly long day of assembly and adventures for Kina and her family. As I write this, Kina is (probably) asleep in her new loft bed, having aged today (by her measure) half a year in a single moment—from “five and a half” to “six” at the stroke of midnight.
I don’t have much to say about six that I didn’t say about five, or four. Kina is a miracle, and she’s kept us alive and kicking through the last six years (and the last three of those in particular). Today, as she chanted the traditional “Are you one! Are you two! Are you three!” she just kept going past six to ten and then eighteen and thirty-one, and it made me remember all those birthdays of my own, and how long it’s taken me to become who I am.
Who was I at six? A little boy spreading Elmer’s glue on his hands and hoping to become Spider-Man, who would run into the snow drifts to hide outside his house when he felt slighted, who loved his first grade teacher because she knew he loved to read and gave him the space to do more of it, who would soon move to another town in another state, and another, and another.
Who would then stop moving just long enough to meet a girl who had once been six herself, in another country where you could eat noodles by the pool.
And then, six years later, get married.
And live.
And decide to add somebody.
And see her come into the world, and spend six years becoming the little version of herself that she is.
You know her, I think. She’s six, today. Five and a half, just recently.
This is a very unusual Parade, because Kina’s only involvement was art direction: “a unicorn with rainbow hair and a long horn.”
She didn’t even sign her own name; she insisted on holding my hand and making it move to write it. A true executive.
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