I said it didn't matter. And I'd convinced myself that it didn't. So had my daughter, Lauren. We both insisted it was no big deal.

My granddaughter, Lucy, would be going to the Dean S. Luce School for first grade. Not John F. Kennedy, the closer neighborhood school where her mother and aunt and uncle had all gone, which she could walk to by herself when she got a little older, where the whole family had sat through dozens of plays and concerts and "bring your parents to lunch" days…