Babies and Puppies

What, real­ly, can be more life-affirm­ing than a beau­ti­ful baby or cud­dly pup­pies? On June 26th, both arrived in our lives. One baby — our first grand­child, Olivia — born to our son and Kore­an daugh­ter-in-law. We received the news via Face­Time from Seoul, South Korea. Though they had Broad­way relat­ed jobs in NYC, they opt­ed to move to Korea for awhile where they would have more time to work at becom­ing a family.

Hours after we received the news about our rose­bud grand­ba­by, two 8 month old pup­pies arrived on our doorstep. Lit­er­al­ly. The own­ers drove them to us, just to see if they might inter­est us and pos­si­bly work out. But how can you say “no” to plead­ing pup­py eyes? Though their own­ers loved these pups, their two sons with autism were not treat­ing them well. They urgent­ly need­ed to be re-homed. Could we refuse? We couldn’t. And didn’t.

Not long ago, we had three dogs, but lost two of them to old age at 14 and 16. We were down to one dog, Mat­tie, who is 10½. I had been keep­ing my eyes open for one pup­py. I wasn’t plan­ning on two.

So here we are, our lives enriched with pho­tos, updates, and knowl­edge of our pre­cious grand­ba­by. At some point we will board a plane, go vis­it, and hold her in our arms. In the mean­time, two new pup­pies keep ask­ing for atten­tion — and I’m more than will­ing to cud­dle and snug­gle. After all, what’s life about, if not babies and puppies?