One year ago tonight, the remarkable Colette Mercier took this photograph, and I will always be grateful that she did. I thought I couldn't remember the first moment holding Kamal until I saw this, and then it rushes back: how every single thing disappeared except this tiny body, this familiar stranger, in my arms; how nothing leading up to that moment mattered anymore, at all; how he looked right at me with his darkly boundless eyes, like he had absolute faith that I could make everything safe and logical, like I wasn't just as flabbergasted as he by everything that had just happened to us. In the picture, there are doctors and nurses rushing around in the background, blurry with speed. I know Adam was next to us, I know Colette was next to us, I know there must have been beeping machines and flashing monitors and fluorescent hospital lights, but for these few seconds Kamal and I were one another's single real thing in the whole world.

Happy birthday, baby. You are far and away the coolest thing that has ever happened to your father and me. You have rendered us dorkier, tireder, and gladder than we thought possible. Thank you for being ours.