Miss Ellie’s tail

Miss Ellie, Mr. Boy’s more-or-less constant companion since he was four months old, is worn and tattered and her once-yellow color is now greenish gray. So much so that the "spirit animal," a stuffed elephant I sometimes call the precocious pachyderm has lately been coming apart in strategic areas. This morning I answered the cry for help and sewed part of her tail back on, the part by which she is carried about, in fact. I got a grateful hug for my efforts, though I kept thinkling while I was doing it that my maternal grandmother would not have awarded me any prizes for the thread-and-needle work. It was a little sloppy. Mr. B. didn’t notice, of course. He wanted strength, not finesse. Miss El was the gift of his maternal aunt, who was killed earlier this month in a motocycle accident.