I spent 1 hour and 45 minutes commuting this morning in Manhattan

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It is a little strange to think that it’s already been over 6.5 years of 100 percent remote working for me. The pandemic started it at my last job. Then I got laid off, found this job, and miraculously, I am still here! I accepted the role as a remote employee and have never looked back. I had always been in a office five days a week prior, as that was just “normal” back then. But now that I am fully remote, it’s hard to imagine being back in an office five days a week, every single week, especially with a child.

Because Kaia has been in school in Chinatown, I am usually on the subway six days of the week (plus Saturday when we’re out and about). I obviously love having reliable public transit since I hate driving. And I love the New York City subway. But occasionally, I have days like today when I really hate commuting when it’s not by foot — completely. Somehow, it took me over 40 minutes just to get her from our apartment near Lincoln Center to her summer camp in Chinatown. I had to take two trains, then walk about 12 minutes from the stop before her actual stop with her to her school. After that, I got on the 6 train to go up to Park Avenue South and 27th Street for today’s office space; that commute took over an hour because the 4/5/6 trains had some signal malfunction, and every single train was either not moving or moving at worse-than-snail speed. I took the 6, then transferred to a yellow train at 14th Street/Union Square to go up to 28th Street. When I finally got to the office just past 9:40, I realized I had already spent an hour and 45 minutes just commuting today. Just think about this: almost two hours to get from Columbus Circle to Manhattan Chinatown and back up to NoMad. THAT IS MAD.

When the subway is working fine, with no signal malfunctions, no sick passengers, and no idiots who decide to go on the train tracks, the subway is amazing. And when it’s not going great, which affected five of the trains I tried to take today, it’s completely and utterly maddening. And it reinforces my desire to keep working remotely or only consider companies that will allow hybrid work. So much time (AND MONEY) is lost when crap like today happens.

The psychology of parenting

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A friend linked me this podcast, The Psychology of Parenting with Dan Siegel, and said she thought I’d like it. It’s essentially about how parenting isn’t really about the child, but about learning about oneself. I immediately recognized Dan Siegel’s name. About two years ago, I read a book he co-authored called The Whole Brain Child, and I really liked the overall takeaways of the book; it resonated with me at the time because it discussed what I already believed, which is that who we are is shaped by our past and past experience; based on those past experiences, we can improve ourselves for our children. I was even more intrigued when I later found out that Dan Siegel went into this area of research driven by his own mercurial childhood, with a raging father and and an emotionally avoidant mother. He is on a long, never-ending journey to understanding his past, present, and future!

I listened to the podcast in full today. During the podcast, he goes through high level points of what drives healthy child development, which has been summed up (pretty smartly!) as the “4 S’s,” which I still remember from reading his book:

  • Safe: The child feels protected from physical and emotional harm. This includes caregivers avoiding frightening behavior and repairing the relationship after mistakes.
  • Seen: The caregiver looks beneath the child’s behavior and tries to understand their feelings, thoughts, and inner experience.
  • Soothed: When the child is distressed, the caregiver helps them through it. Over time, this repeated “inter-soothing” helps the child learn to soothe themselves.
  • Secure: This develops from consistently feeling safe, seen, and soothed. The child learns, “I can rely on my caregiver, I am worthy of care, and I can handle difficult feelings.” 

His takeaway: the key idea is not perfect parenting, but reliably showing up and repairing when things go wrong. In Siegel’s framework, secure attachment grows from the repeated overall pattern—not from preventing every disappointment, conflict, or tantrum.

What I did not write about two years ago but thought a lot about after reading The Whole Brain Child was how the 4 S’s noted here are a summary of everything Ed lacked. He never felt safe from physical or emotional harm, as my parents repeatedly screamed and yelled at him. My mom used to hit him as a child, sometimes for things that weren’t even “wrong.” My dad would roar like a lion in the house and constantly criticize and name call him. There was never any semblance of “repair”: they’d just go about their day as though nothing happened after. Ed frequently told me he felt invisible to our dad. He’d be right in the room and not hear anything he said. Our dad preferred talking to himself than talking to us. To “understand feelings” of one’s own child is a pretty impossible task when our dad could not even understand his own feelings. Our parents rarely “soothed” us; instead when they saw us down, they’d double down and add more doubt, making us feel even worse. Ed never felt like he could rely on my parents to share anything, so even when he got abused by a teacher in elementary school, my parents didn’t find out about it until after he died, when they went through his belongings and read about it in a college essay he wrote.

The truth is that I don’t really think I experienced any of the four S’s with our parents, either, yet I turned out completely differently. And I still think a huge part of this is because I found mentors in my middle and high school teachers who really looked after me, nurtured me, and made me feel “seen” and truly understood.

We can’t bring Ed back. We can’t change my parents. But we can use all this past history to inform how we move forward, and how I choose to parent Kaia. I hope I am always able to make her feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure. And when I am not, that I am able to be a fucking adult about it and admit my wrongs, apologize, take ownership, and move forward with her.

A day spent at Sojo Spa Club

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A friend of mine told me she wanted to go to Sojo Spa Club on her day off and asked if I wanted to come. I had heard of this specific spa in Edgewater, but I didn’t have anyone who would be interested in going there with me, so I never thought too much about it until this friend brought it up. I’m always up for a spa visit, so I told her that I’d come.

So we went after I made an online booking for us. When we arrived, I was surprised to see there was already a line of people waiting to get checked in. While I recognize this is a Korean-owned spa, I was not quite prepared for how strict it would be. The website said they do not allow any food or beverages inside. So when we entered, we had to go through a security check, which included not just the obvious weapons search, but they also took out any snacks or food that anyone had and separated them by guest name for pickup after the end of the spa visit. They made my friend take her son’s protein bar and put it in a ziplock back with her name on it. They even made me empty out the water from my reusable water bottle! I found this a little ridiculous — were we going through the airport?!

We arrived in the morning, so it was nice and quiet in most of the spa pools we visited. My friend said she asked ChatGPT for a recommendation on the order in which we should visit the different spa sections, and it told her that we should go to the infinity pool first on the top floor to enjoy the view before the crowds descended. This recommendation was 100 percent spot on, as when we first got into the pool overlooking Manhattan, it was just us and two other people there. By the time we left, there were at least eight others. One annoying thing about the infinity pool: no signs say this, but you’re not allowed to swim in it. It’s for soaking only. My friend tried to swim on her back on the pool, and within three second, an employee came out of nowhere to tell her she wasn’t allowed to swim laps. This sounded pretty insane for the only pool of its size in the entire spa.

In the locker rooms understandably, they do not allow mobile phone usage. But they ask you to download a map of the spa onto your phone to navigate it. I whipped out my phone to see where we should go next, and once again within seconds, yet another employee came out to remind me that cell phone use was not allowed in the locker room.

Once we ate lunch, my friend went to get a Korean scrub while I enjoyed the hydro-jet pool and read on my Kindle on the endless lounge chairs. It felt really nice and relaxing to be able to read a book in the middle of the day. But I will say that the entire area was getting quite crowded. The pools all had lots of people in them, and almost every lounge chair around me was either claimed or occupied. Morning is definitely the best time to be here.

I will say that I’ve never seen this many employees in any spa before in the U.S. This was pretty intense to me, and really annoying that it felt like everything was being policed so heavily. But I will say that the spa was a good experience overall with lots of different relaxation areas that were well put together. I really enjoyed the outdoor thermal pools and the wet sauna. The hydro-jet soaking pool was also very fun and intense — very good to get out those kinks in your back, and not for the faint of heart!

I’m not in a rush to come back here, but it’s nice to know that a massive spa complex like this exists not too far from Manhattan. Edgewater is just across the Hudson River, but it felt like a world away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

A question I’ve never been asked before

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“Yvonne, who does your Botox?”

I wrinkled my brow and was completely caught off guard by the question. “Excuse me?” I blurted out. Did I hear this right?

“Who does your Botox?” my friend asked again with a smile on her face.

“Oh, I don’t do Botox!” I said, surprised. Then, I got confused. Does it look like parts of my face don’t move “normally”?! “Why, does it look like I do Botox?”

“No, not at all,” my friend insisted, still smiling and now laughing. “Your skin just looks so good. I thought you did Botox. In fact, doesn’t everyone do Botox?”

I laughed at this and paused. “Actually, I don’t think I have any friends who do Botox,” I replied to her.

She smiled even bigger this time. “Yes, you do. You have me.”

That’s when I was even more shocked. She does Botox?! She doesn’t look like she does it. As I’ve gotten into my mid-30s and am now 40, I can spot Botox on people’s faces pretty quickly. Some people are more obvious than others. But you can usually tell when you look at people who have been doing it for a long time. Their faces just do not move as naturally as they should when they smile or laugh. The tops of the cheeks and the foreheads that never move are usually the dead giveaway. She pointed out the three parts of her forehead where she’s been getting it done over the last year by her doctor friend, who shares a vial of Botox across three friends and splits the cost. I suppose she is an example of someone who does Botox where it actually looks natural.

“Well, if you ever change your mind, (friend’s name) hosts a Botox party about every three months,” my friend said. “And you are always more than welcome to join!”

In general, I’d always been against cosmetic surgery for things like eyelids surgery (UGH), boob jobs (except in the case of breast cancer related breast reconstruction, which frankly I do not consider “cosmetic”), face lifts, and anything related. I just think we have what we have, and we should work with what we have. On the other hand, I’m all for people getting things removed they do not like that really bother them (e.g. moles, sun spots, freckles, permanent body hair removal. Contrary to what Chris thinks, those procedures are not “cosmetic surgery.” They are cosmetic removals). And as we age, in general we should embrace the gift of getting older by taking care of our bodies, which includes our skin and hair. I’m a huge advocate of sun protection/sunscreen. I believe in regular exercise and eating well. And I believe in trying to reduce stressors, which all lead to a healthier and hopefully happier life and health span. And I’ve been pro retinol, vitamin C, and other skin nourishing ingredients forever. But outside of that, I never really considered any cosmetic surgery like Botox, fillers, or the like.

But then when my friend mentioned Botox, it started making me think of actual numbers. And that’s when I asked ChatGPT to give me a breakdown of usage: It shared that about 5 percent of the U.S. population aged 25 and above uses cosmetic Botox. The breakdown is estimated to be: 20% Baby Boomers and older; 39% Generation X; 35% Millennials; 6% Generation Z and younger. So that’s about 12 million people in this country — not a small number.

As I’ve gotten older, while I still do not think any of those cosmetic procedures are right for me (and more so, I absolutely am not willing to pay any of those prices out of pocket!), I’ve relaxed my general stance on them. At the end of the day, people have to do what they are comfortable with, and if they have the time and money to spend on these procedures, and they make them feel good about themselves, then all power to them. Plus for women especially, the beauty and “youth” standards are so stupid, senseless, and unrealistic that I totally understand why some women would just default to Botox, fillers, etc., once they get to a certain age, assuming they have a certain level of means. Yes, even today, the ageism against women continues to be that worse versus for men. So much for the equaling of the damn sexes.

Conversations about death with a 4-year-old

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In the last couple months, Kaia has been asking questions that dance around death, but are not quite about death. It usually comes up in the context of bees or animals dying. She sees bugs get squashed all the time and knows that means they are dead. She sees her teachers stepping on lantern flies and their guts spraying everywhere. She has also noticed road kill a few times. In the last week or so, she’s asked about where my gonggong/popo/yeye/nainai (grandparents) are and why we cannot see them, or why she hasn’t met them. Then the anniversary of Ed’s passing came this past Wednesday, she started asking me more pressing questions about him, indicating that she’s really thinking through all this quite thoughtfully for her age.

“Why did he have to die?” she asked me.

“Well, Jiujiu got very, very sick, so sick that he just couldn’t live anymore,” I explained, in the lightest way possible. Then, I immediately dreaded that she might worry that if she catches a cold that she would then die. And… oh dear, that’s exactly where it went.

“Does that mean that if I get sick that I could die, too?” Kaia asked me with wide, worried eyes. Great. I am clearly terrible at this.

“No, baby, not at all!” I quickly tried to reassure her. “You see, we all get a little sick sometimes. Sometimes, we get a cold or a flu or a stuffy nose. But our bodies are strong, and we fight it off and we get better. Jiujiu’s situation was a lot, lot different than this. His body was sick for a very long time, and then his body couldn’t work anymore.”

She gave me her side-eyed head tilt again. Then, she buried her head and cried, “I don’t want to die!”

“Pookie, there’s no reason for you to worry about dying,” I held her close when I said this. “You are super strong and healthy, and you are going to grow up and hopefully have a long, healthy life. You have so much to do in this great life you have! Eventually, we will all die, but hopefully, that will be when we are very, very old, very far from now.”

Kaia paused. Then she looked up at me again with eyes of terror. “I don’t want mommy to die! I don’t want you to die, mama!” At this point, there were fat tears rolling down her face. It felt like I was getting worse as this was progressing.

“Oh, Pookster,” I said to her. “Mama is quite strong and healthy now. I tell you this every day, don’t I, that every day, Daddy and Mama take care of you, protect you, and love you. And so, hopefully, I will live for a very, very long time. So there’s no need to worry about mama dying now or anytime soon. I live to take care of you and protect you and love you, and you give me a reason to live and love. Do you understand? I love you.”

After a long pause, she seemed to be satisfied by this response. Phew. She snuggled closer to me and said she loved me. Then, she asked if we could build her little plane tomorrow. I said yes.

I always have to remind myself when having conversations with her that kids of her age take everything very literally. Her mind and body are growing by leaps and bounds. And the conversations will keep getting deeper and more complex. And I just need to stay ahead of it and be careful with every word I share with her. The last thing I want her to do is worry every day or night that Chris or I will die, or that she will die, or that she will be alone. She is definitely a feeling child, my feeling baby.

The changing neighborhoods of New York City

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Today we spent the day exploring Bushwick. Bushwick is a much different neighborhood than it was back in 2008 when I first moved here. Back then, I still remember visiting two apartments with my friend/soon-to-be roommate in the area, and I wasn’t particularly enthused about the neighborhood. There didn’t seem to be that many local businesses other than drugstores, bodegas, and laundromats nearby. There were a lot of people all over the sidewalks and streets with seemingly nowhere to go, just loitering about doing nothing. I didn’t really understand it, but I knew it wasn’t a place I wanted to live then. The rent was cheap (for that time), but the cheap rent wasn’t enough to get me to seriously consider living there. Plus, neither of the apartments we saw were that notable; we would have been massively settling if we chose to move forward with them.

Well, since then, that roommate ended up living in Bushwick for about nine years after we moved out of our Elmhurst apartment. The area’s gotten more expensive and well… gentrified. Around 2016, I heard that a friend’s girlfriend who was living in Bushwick had to move out of her apartment because her rent was going up… 100 percent. More diverse eateries are opening up there, whether it’s Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, or Honduran. And a number of fun breweries, cafes, and bars have opened up, as well. Bushwick is a fun place to hang out in and explore now. It’s “cool” to say that you live there today.

We originally wanted to come to Bushwick last weekend, when we were meant to see our two friends for lunch. My friend ended up not feeling well, so she had to bail on us. But when I originally suggested Bushwick, she was not happy about it and said she preferred to never go there. As a child, she lived on the border of Bushwick, and her family had gotten attacked a number of times. So the area is a trigger for her of past trauma. She said she still thought of it as a dangerous place.

I totally get that bad memories are associated with places where bad things have happened to you. But in places like Brooklyn where the “boundary lines” between neighborhoods are a bit blurry, I just thought this was a bit strange. Sometimes when you’re in these areas, it’s not clear whether you’re in Bushwick, Williamsburg or even Ridgewood, where my friend grew up. Plus, that was now over 40 years ago for her. In the 18 years since I first went to Bushwick, the area has changed dramatically. So I cannot even begin to fathom how different it is today versus 40-plus years ago.

This reminded me of my ride-share driver from Raleigh back in April. He told me there was no way that Sunnyside/Woodside would have any good bakeries that people would travel to because “the place was a dump,” and he insisted it always would be. But I insisted to him, as I did to my friend about Bushwick, that places can and do change over time. You never know what you’re missing by assuming the worst of places.

But it’s not like Sunnyside, Woodside, or Bushwick really need that ride-share driver or my friend to patronize their businesses. They seem quite trendy and popular enough on their own!

Broken eggs

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Early on in my days living on my own post college, I would be *that* person at the supermarket, opening up the egg carton and removing every single egg, checking its bottom to ensure that there were no cracks. If you buy and eat eggs, you know that cracks in eggs are quite common, and some of them are so tiny that if you do not inspect them closely, you may actually miss one! So whenever I am shopping to buy eggs, I do this exact practice, every single time. I do not care that it takes a little bit longer. I definitely have never cared when I see people looking at me. Because in the worst case scenario, you realize you have a cracked egg. It may even be contaminated. Are you going to go all the way back to the store for a refund? Or, will you just suck it up, eat the egg (and risk getting sick), or just toss it and accept it as a sunk cost?

I hate food waste. It totally infuriates me. When I think of wasting food, all I think about is my mom constantly telling Ed and me when we were kids that she grew up barely having enough plain rice to eat, and that my dad went to sleep hungry many nights. Sometimes, he even ate spoiled leftover food and got food poisoning. So, you can bet that a) I don’t want to waste the food and b) I definitely do not want to waste the money, or the time it takes to return and exchange.

So Chris brought home a carton of eggs from Whole Foods yesterday where three of the eggs were cracked. I realized this when I carefully lowered two of them into boiling water to make boiled eggs yesterday, and both immediately ballooned white into my boiling water. I immediately knew this was not user error. Then, I went to inspect the rest of the carton and found a third egg bubbling with its white oozing out. So, off to Whole Foods I went to return them today. And I wanted an exchange. So, I went to the eggs section and carefully lifted every single egg out of the carton to inspect them. As I did this, another potential egg buyer, noticing what i was doing, decided that she would also inspect each of the egg bottoms while I did this. And then, we looked at each other, made eye contact, and I gave a little head nod of approval. She gets it.

I did the exchange swiftly. The cashier didn’t seem to mind and was totally unfazed. Now, I get all 18 of my eggs fully in tact.

Kaia raises her hand to do chores

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In the last several months, we’ve been trying to encourage Kaia to do little chores to help out. Some tasks are very basic, such as putting her dirty clothes from the day into the washing machine, adding her socks into her zipped-up sock laundry bag (okay, this was really meant to be a lingerie washing bag I got as a freebie many moons ago, but I don’t wear delicate lingerie, so now you can see how it can be repurposed so we don’t lose tiny socks!), and taking off and tucking her shoes into the closet when she comes home.

There have been other areas where she’s proactively asked to help out. The biggest one that gives her lots of pride as of late is watering my plants. I have three plants by our kitchen window sill, plus my money tree right by the TV. The money tree is unique in that the directions say you shouldn’t add water to it, but instead should add two ice cubes to the pot once a week. That way, the water slowly but surely seeps into the soil and evenly spreads across the money tree’s roots. When we returned from our Caribbean trip, the money tree was very, very upset with me. It hadn’t been watered in over two weeks, and every single leaf was drooping down. So I made sure to give it extra ice cubes. Kaia noticed this, and she asked if she could water the money tree from then on forward. That led to her asking about my other plants, and so she knows how I water them and approximately how frequently. She also knows which vessels I use to water them.

Another thing she likes to help out with is emptying out the recycling bin and the compost. I use a specific plate for compost scraps, and we have a cardboard box in our front hallway where we keep the recyclables. So when she knows it’s time to empty either out, she rushes to come out with me. I tell her which bin what type of trash belongs in (paper vs. bottles vs. compost), and she tries to remember which one is which each time as she takes one recyclable at a time.

From what I have read, there’s a small window (approximately ages 3-6, depending on how early you start) where kids are happy to do chores because they want to feel like they are contributing to the family. So I’m happy to see that Kaia is interested and I don’t have to force her to do things… yet. The last thing I want is some entitled princess who thinks everything should be done for her. I can only hope this desire to help out continues!

13 years.

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Dearest Ed,

Today marks 13 years since you died. It’s strange to think that it’s actually been that long. But every year when we reach this anniversary, I also think that it feels like just yesterday. They say that when you love someone deeply and were truly connected to them, a part of them continues to live on within you — in the way you speak, hear, listen, see. Maybe that’s why sometimes when I think of you now, my initial feeling is not always of sadness, but rather of a strange joy — a joy that can only be felt and known if you genuinely loved someone to the core. Although I could not always have the types of conversation I wished I could have with you given your struggles, I always knew that you loved me deeply. That’s why it’s painful to remember that you’re no longer here.

For the very first time at the age of 4.5, Kaia has been able to have a real conversation about you with me. I was telling her that today was the anniversary of your passing. She didn’t quite understand what that meant, but I told her that thirteen years ago today, you “passed from the earth” in Chinese. That’s the polite way of saying that someone “passed away” or died in Chinese. She’s been asking more about death lately — about our Nainai dying, about bugs and lantern flies dying. So she understood what I said what I conveyed this to her.

“He died today…. 13 years ago?” she asked me in a whisper today. “That means he’s not here anymore?”

I told her this was true. She responded, “I’ve never seen Jiujiu. I only get to see him in pictures. Is this why?”

My heart ached when she asked me this. I could feel my eyes welling up. These are important things for her to know and understand. I just wasn’t quite expecting this at this moment.

“Why did he die?” she asked me. “What happened?”

The full, unvarnished truth isn’t quite preschooler-friendly. One day, she will learn the full story, but not now… not for a while. For now, I told her that her Jiujiu was sick, and he didn’t get the help he needed, and so he passed.

“Where is he now?” she asked me. She had a deep look of concern in her eyes.

“He’s up there, watching over us every day,” I said while motioning towards the sky. I may not fully believe in God, but given you are a Christian, I might as well tell Kaia something that he believed. “He watches over us, protects us, and loves us. Do you know how much he loves you? Jiujiu would have loved to have met you!”

She nodded her head. “Does that mean he can fly… the way birds do?” Kaia asked me.

“Maybe,” I tentatively replied to her. “Just maybe.”

“But I don’t want to die! I don’t want to get sick and die!” she moaned.

Oh, dear. This was going down not-great territory. I told her that Jiujiu’s situation was a lot different. Not everyone just gets sick and dies. It’s a lot more complicated than that. I told her that she will (hopefully) live a very, very, very long life, and she won’t have to worry about dying for a long, long time. I told her that we’d protect her and take care of her as long as we could.

This seemed to calm her. She snuggled up against me and asked for more cuddles.

I wish a lot of things were true. I wish that you were still here, that you were healthy, of sound mind and body. I wish that you could have a relationship with your niece. I wish she could know you in the flesh and not just see you in photos. But now, the most I can ask for is that I hope you are at peace. I still think of you every day, many times multiple times a day. And while others may have forgotten or try to forget you, I will never forget you. I hope to honor your legacy in my life, and through raising Kaia as best as I can. I hope you approve of how I’ve done so far.

I love you. And I miss you every day. I hope you know that. We had soy sauce chicken to remember you today. I picked it up right before I picked Kaia up from summer camp. She asked me why I got soy sauce chicken, and I told her it’s because Jiujiu liked it. And today, we remember him. Do they make that up where you are? If not, feel free to sneak a bite from the fridge if you feel like coming down. I promise I won’t get mad.

With all my love,

Yvonne (& Kaia & Chris)

Kaia: Always full of questions now

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“MAMA! Did you know that hyenas can eat babies?” Kaia asked as she came running to me this morning while I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom. She had her Lion King book in hand. I believe that was one of the books she read with Chris before bed last night.

“Yes, that’s right, Pooks,” I said to her. “That’s why we never want to get too close to the hyenas!”

“But, but, the big lions will kill them! Mufasa will protect us and kill them!” she exclaimed triumphantly. I’m not sure how much Kaia is aware that her dad is absolutely obsessed with Mufasa and all the power he stands for, but I am sure she will learn in due time.

Kaia is over 4.5 years old now. When I was her age, I still remember occasionally crying myself to sleep, thinking about the terrifying day when my mom would die. While I loved both my parents, I was always closer to my mom. I went to so many funerals by the age of four — more funerals than weddings. So after each funeral, I would ask my mom about what happened. She told me that no one lives forever, that everyone has to die. And I asked her, does this mean you will die, too? And she said, yes, everyone including me. And that made me so, so sad, and I had no idea how soon that day would come. Because as she explained to me then, none of us really know when we will die. I kept wondering, how could I possibly live without my mommy?

Kaia has actually been asking about death lately. I tell her what a lucky life we live, how lucky she is, and how very, very lucky she is to have two sets of living grandparents. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a Suma, Topa, Popo, AND Gonggong! And then she says, where are your Sumi and Topi and Popo and Gonggong? And I explain to her that I actually never met my Yeye (Topa), Popo, or Gonggong. I only ever met my Nainai (Suma). The other three passed away before I was born. She asks what that means. I tell her that passing away means that you are no longer living like she and I are; they are no longer of this world, and we will never see them again in this life.

Then she asks, where is your Nainai? And I said, she passed away, too. She does her usual Kaia-esque side head tilt and looks up, thinking.

“She isn’t in this world anymore?” Kaia looks at me with her thinking face. “So we can’t see her now?”

“Yes,” I say lightly. “That is right.”

I’ve also tried to tell her about Ed. She knows who her Jiujiu is and can point him out in many photos. I tell her that he has also passed away, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still out there in a different world, watching over us.

“Do you know that Jiujiu loves you?” I asked her. “He might not be here on earth anymore, but he loves you and watches over us.”

She looks up at me, smiles, and vigorously nods her head.

I wonder if she feels a connection to this person, this Jiujiu, who she has never met before. He is a person I reference in photos and speech quite a bit, but one of very few people she has never, and will never, meet. Little does she know that she shares the same nose as her Jiujiu. He is within her.