I love looking at pictures from my daughter’s first day of preschool. Three years old, wearing a dress with pink apples on it. I had perfected getting her hair into pigtails just a few weeks before. There was something joyous and hopeful about those little hair geysers sprouting straight off her head. In the photos from that day, we look like any other family on the first day of school. My boys, ages 4 and 6, wearing new future-oriented pants that look a little too long, are smiling proudly at the thought of their sister joining them. It was raining and unseasonably cold; our raincoats seemed out of sync with our end-of-summer tans. In one picture, Mae is leaning into my lap, her yellow raincoat and pigtails buried by my scarf as I give her one last kiss.
