Six years ago, I wrote these words on my first weekend home together as a family of five: “We brought Hope home with us on Saturday.” Indeed. It is true that Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of of central and eastern european descent) name for the deceased and Dylan and Ruby follow in that tradition. Dylan is named in honor of Phil’s Aunt Dora and Ruby for my mother Ronni. But Hope was to be my hat tip to her Sephardic (middle eastern) heritage. She is named for the living. We honored her great grandmother Helen and her grandfather Lewis and her grandmother Linda to come up with Hope Leigh. Right from the start, Hope was a symbol of life. I think I might have mentioned this before, but my c-section with her was one for the record books. It started routine, but turned into a nearly three hour ordeal, requiring a separate procedure to deal with old old scar tissue from my previous sections before they could even begin to unravel her from my body. A c section is a strange process o