My day started with a two-hour phone call with Day who took the day off to deal with the sadness of taking Maisy back. The whole family made the decision together, but still it's very hard, especially for Jackson.
"What would we do without Nana's lesson about tuition?" she asked. Whenever we think we've made a mistake, or when things don't go as planned, our conversation almost always works its way back to Carlene's words: "Everything is tuition."
Day said the Leary course was called "Should the Learys get a dog?" The tuition was about $300, a lot of love, and now a lot of tears. "But now we know," she said in her brave Day voice.
Then I got a phone call from Will and a text from Veronica telling me that Elena insisted on taking her sewing projects to school. She strutted right into her class and announced that she'd had a sewing day with her grandmother and showed her teacher and classmates what she'd made.
I ran errands all day, including buying Christmas presents for the grandchildren. After four hours of shopping, I stopped at Cappy's for a solo dinner of shrimp nachos.
My favorite purchase was an assortment of beautiful German-made animal figures (Schleich) for Elena--dogs, cats, a horses, sheep and chickens, all the animals that live at their house, with a few African animals in the mix.
Tonight, however, after a personally-good day, I'm watching in shock the tragedy of the terrorist attacks in Paris. The World Trade Center is lit in red, white, and blue. The connectedness to all humans tonight reminds me of the solidarity we felt right after September 11th.
Every day the news is filled with tragedy and meanness--school shootings, terrorist attacks, and politicians vociferously insulting each other. I wonder when and if the madness will end and we'll find ways to build bridges on which our children and grandchildren can live.
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