It was month 8.9, and I didn't want her. They said I would be fine if they spooned her out. So I said YES.

I laid on the Parenthood sheets and thought:  this was not planned for. Back then I traded a single night as a single girl for this double failure of love.

Then I heard the cry. The tears from the nurse startled me. And I thought. Is this her first time?

Then another cry. It was Lucy. Even with her eyes closed I could see they were blue. The perfectness of those two arms and two legs, the roundly shaped face with the dark patch of black on top, startled me once again.

Three sobbing human children of God were at once oblivious to the sterile white room and its stainless basket. Six arms and six legs entwined as this divine moment passed.

This was a child. A child of mine.

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Now she is nearly nine. In another sterile white room. There are again the three of us. Me and Lucille and the same dear nurse from those years ago. Lucy has none of her blackest of hair. And she has no future. Only that brief nine years.

Is that nine years enough? No. Ninety nine would still be insufficient.

We entwine again, the three of us. All six limbs. And we cry again.

And Lucy leaves.

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Lucy left knowing love. Nurse Bonnie loved her. Daddy Sam is red-eyed in the corner. Bobby is four. He loved her. How she taught Bobby most of what he knows! Except for where she went and why she left.

And her Father in the heaven she's at now. I imagine there may be six arms and legs--hers, those of her Lord and grandma Joan--celebrating her now.

I loved, adored, cared for before, but specially during her sickness. Slept with her as she faded. Fed her food she didn't want. And cold water.

I believe the apex of our love was the Christmas dusk where I confessed that I didn't want her until I saw her. And how, of course, that was the greatest moment of my existence.

Truly, the greatest of love is life.