“This used to be the dining room, but since we always have mealtime in the kitchen, we’ve turned it into a learning space. Gisele’s coding class meets here three times a week now. Come, let me show you to your guest room, where you can freshen up before lunch,” Bernard said to Corinna.

Corinna tried to do a bit of unpacking in her cramped bedroom. She took out the tin of Almond Roca candies that she had splurged on and went downstairs, where she found the family was already seated around a wooden farm table on the small patio deck.

“I brought you a little present, Gisele,” Corinna said. She handed her the shiny pink tin with the plastic lid, and the two-and-a-half-year-old stared at it in absolute puzzlement.

“Wah lao! Plastic! Put that down now, Gisele!” Bernard gasped in horror.

“Oh I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you—there’s no plastic in this house,” Kitty whispered to Corinna.

“Not a problem. I’ll just take the candies out for her and you’ll never see the container again,” Corinna said calmly.

Bernard gave Corinna a withering look. “Gisele is on a sugar-free, gluten-free organic farm-to-table Paleo diet.”

“I am terribly sorry—I had no idea.”

Seeing the look on Corinna’s face, Bernard softened a little. “I’m sorry. I don’t think guests, especially those visiting from Asia, are prepared for our lifestyle. But I hope you will appreciate the conscious, nourishing food we consume in this house. We have our own farm up in Topanga where we grow all our produce. Here, try some of this fennel-stuffed acorn squash. We just harvested it yesterday. Gisele plucked the fennel with her own hands, didn’t you, Gisele?”

“Sólo comemos lo que cultivamos,”^*2 Gisele chirped, as she began chewing carefully on her tiny slices of medium-rare grass-fed-and-finished filet mignon.

“I guess you probably won’t be drinking the Johnnie Walker Black Label I brought for you,” Corinna remarked.

“I honor your gesture, but I only drink reverse-osmosis water these days,” Bernard said.

“I honor your gesture?” My God, look what happens to Hong Kong men when they move to California, Corinna thought in horror.

After Corinna had politely swallowed down the blandest meal of her entire life, she stood in the foyer watching as Bernard helped Gisele put on her TOMS sneakers and her little hemp sun hat.

Kitty pleaded with Bernard. “We just arrived. Can’t Gisele skip one session today and be with us? I want to take her to buy some cute clothes at Fred Segal.”

“You’re not buying her any more clothes from that temple of materialism. The last time you got her those frilly pink princess dresses, we ended up donating all of it to Union Rescue Mission. I really don’t want her to be wearing clothes that reinforce gender stereotypes and fairytale narratives.”

“Okay, then, can we just take her to the beach or something? The beach is still allowed, right? Isn’t sand gluten-free or whatever?”

Bernard took Kitty around the corner and said in a hushed tone, “I don’t think you really understand how much Gisele needs these biweekly mindfulness sessions in the sensory deprivation float tank. Her Reiki practitioner tells me that she still struggles with retained trauma and anxiety related to her passage through the birth canal.”