Daisy called her teacher Mom by accident today, and cried the whole way home in the car.

I told her that families come in all different shapes.

And I waited until she was asleep before I let myself cry in the kitchen.”

The entire room was silent; no one moved, no one spoke.

Some were weeping openly.

And at the very bottom of the box, beneath everything else, lay one last item: an empty photo frame, and inside it, where a picture should have been, a simple index card in my handwriting.

It read: The mother-daughter photo we never got to take.