I had carried them for eight months and nearly died delivering them and I had not yet, until that moment, touched them.

When the nurse finally settled first one and then the other against my chest, skin to skin, I understood every fierce and unreasonable thing I had done that morning, and every fierce and unreasonable thing I would ever do.

“Your great-grandfather,” I whispered to the top of my daughter’s downy head, “would have adored you.

He built a wall around you before you existed.

And I am going to spend my whole life making sure you never once feel how close the danger came.”