She had called me, that day, because she could not carry it alone any longer.

And she had been right not to be able to, because no child should ever have been asked to.

But she would never have to test the limits of her own small strength like that again.

Because there was a father in this house now who had finally, fully understood the one thing that matters most, the thing this whole family is built around now, curled up in the shape of a service dog on the grass and spoken every night at bedtime: that the people you love should never, ever have to carry the heavy things by themselves.

That is the whole of it.

That is what a home is for.

And in ours, from that day forward, no one — not my daughter, not my son, not any of us — would ever again carry anything alone.