They Were About to Split Up Five Kids Under Seven. The One Man Willing to Take All Five Knew Exactly What That Does to a Child

I’ve looked at a lot of those photographs over the years.

I’ve trained myself not to fall into every one of them, because you can’t, because you’d drown.

But something in this one caught me and would not let go — the way the children were holding each other’s coats.

Not posing.

Not looking at the camera.

Just gripping fistfuls of each other’s jackets, five kids who had already figured out, in the deepest part of themselves, that the only thing standing between them and the dark was the sibling next to them.

I knew that grip.