I understand now that the deepest joys are almost always the ones that cost the most to reach, that a thing longed for and grieved for and nearly given up on arrives with a weight and a sweetness that an easy blessing never has.

Fiona was not just a baby.

She was four years of longing, finally answered, and I felt every one of those years in the warmth of her against my chest.

I did not know, in that last perfect hour, what was coming through the door.

But I have never regretted lingering in it, because it was the pure culmination of everything we had suffered to reach, and even everything that came after could not take that hour away from us.

We had earned it.