A year after that first surgery, I found out I was pregnant, and when our son was born on a crisp Wednesday morning, we named him Matthew.

Paisley came running into the hospital room with a drawing she had made in bold marker: four figures under a bright yellow sun — Zachary, Paisley, me, and a small swaddled baby — with OUR FAMILY printed carefully across the top.

“Matthew doesn’t have fingers yet,” she explained seriously.

“I’ll draw them when he’s bigger.”

I have kept that drawing.

It hangs, framed, in the hallway of the house we all live in now, and I stop in front of it more often than I would admit — four figures under a yellow sun, one of them a fingerless baby who has long since grown his fingers, above the words OUR FAMILY in a six-year-old’s careful capitals.

I stop in front of it because it is, to me, the truest document of my entire life, truer than any diploma on my office wall or any certificate in any drawer.