I am grateful for the loving effort Carla is putting forth these past few days into making Christmas cheery for us all by overcoming her distaste for shopping and spending the better part of today and yesterday shopping. We had decided after last Christmas that we would do 100% of our Christmas shopping locally. We probably won’t end up doing 100%, but the decision does mean Carla has been all over town: Jo-Ann Fabrics, Goodwill, Ross, and Target, to name a few.
I am grateful for our tenant Apoo’s eagerness to share Indian dishes with us. We had her, her husband Vijay, and her father Raju up for dinner this evening so we could meet her father. We shared garden vegetable quiche; she shared chicken biryani. Carla and I overate because everything was so tasty.
I am grateful for the culturally show of fatherly tenderness Raju made by touching Éa’s face when she caught her hand in the globe while fighting Sullivan over it. Perhaps it is purely cultural and doesn’t carry the same meaning in Telegu India as it does in Pennsylvania. But his willingness to touch a child he had just met simply because she was a child who was in pain was touching. At the same time, I wonder if it babies children too much. Nevertheless, I think there is something to learn there.