I had spent her entire life giving to her.

And now she was giving back, and so were all of them, and I understood that this, this exact reversal, this moment when the children you carried become strong enough to carry you, is not the failure of parenthood but its quiet culmination, the thing all the years are secretly for.

And right there, in the middle of the reception, surrounded by the six girls who had once been heartbroken children behind a closing door, I finally let go, and let the tears come, and did not try to hide them from my daughters the way I had hidden them for fifteen years, crying alone in kitchens after they had fallen asleep.

Because I understood something, at last, standing in the circle of them.