From the living room, eight-year-old Brinley shrieked in absolute horror. “Mom! No!”
Brooke broke character and started laughing loudly. “I am just kidding, Brinley! Relax!”
The tension in the room evaporated. Even Owen cracked a genuine, relieved smile and shook his head.
Then, Lucy wandered into the living room. She spotted Cartier the Pomeranian.
Lucy stopped, crossed her arms, and looked at Brooke. “Aunt Brooke. Why on earth is your dog wearing rain boots inside the house?”
Brooke paused. She opened her mouth, ready to deploy a barrage of buzzwords about canine anxiety and tactile sensitivity.
“You know what, Lucy?” Brooke admitted, shaking her head. “It’s been a year, and I honestly still don’t have a logical answer for that.”
Watching her admit defeat to a ten-year-old might have been the most profound evidence of personal growth I had witnessed in my entire life.
I believed that if family called, you deployed. If a machine broke, you sacrificed your weekend to repair it. If someone lacked money, time, tools, or contacts, you absorbed the deficit and found a way to provide it.
