How much must I give them? How much could I? But the moments from those years wove themselves into an unexpected gift. Scenes where we perched on kitchen counters to talk late into the night, left encouraging notes out and meals kept warm for when one of us got home. The air in our little bathroom was full of humming and hairspray. My daughter spent her first years swimming in the love of her live-in aunts and slowly, very slowly, the size of the cost diminished when compared to the reward. We’d been given the unshakeable bedrock of each other.