The truth is more humbling.

Suffering can hide in plain sight, especially when a child has been taught to hide it, especially when the parent is tired and hopeful and looking for reasons to believe everything is fine.

Her relief, when it finally came, measured exactly the size of the fear it replaced, and the size of that fear told me how much I had missed.

I resolved, watching that relief spread across her face, that I would learn to see the light in my daughter’s face well enough to notice the very day it began to dim, and I have kept that resolution more faithfully than almost any other.