Her name was Judy. She had thick, dark hair, which she pulled into a pony tail, and though I coveted that pony tail (my hair was curly and short) and though we were the same age - 8 or 9 when we met, 12 the last time I saw her - we weren't ever friends.

She had braces on her legs, big metal ones, and her gait was slow and labored, and I wanted to ask her why. What happened? Did you have polio? Because polio was the only illness I knew about.

Blessed is a word I find myself saying a lot lately. How blessed I am. How blessed my family is. How blessed we are to have Lucy.

Six years ago, I didn't feel blessed. Lucy, my first grandchild, my daughter's child, was 12 hours old when we learned she had Down syndrome. We wept. Three days later, we were told…

I strap her into her car seat and tell her that we are going to the doctor. And she smiles at me and says, "Mimi's house."

"First we're going to the doctor, Lucy, then you can come to my house, OK?" And then we sing, in big, booming voices, "Police officers, firefighters, a doctor or a nurse. They help me if I'm hurt. They help me if I'm hurt!" over and over until we arrive at Norwood Hospital.

`The victories, when they come, will be sweet," someone, many someones, told us after my granddaughter Lucy was born.

But we didn't believe in victories then or that life would ever be sweet again. We were stunned and scared and grieving the child Lucy wasn't. The words "Down syndrome" had rocked our world.

We should have listened to the people in the trenches, mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, people who knew and loved someone with a disability who kept telling us: She will be fine. You will be fine. You will be better than fine. Wait. You'll see. We've seen.

“The tooth is missing. It will never come in. Missing teeth are common among children with Down syndrome,” the specialist told my daughter and son-in-law months ago.

He didn’t cushion his words. He didn’t say, “May not.” He said never.

And then last week, there it was – a lower right lateral incisor, next to her lower right central incisor, exactly where it belongs.

Maybe I bought the book after Lucy was born, or maybe some well-intentioned someone gave it to me. I don't remember. But here it is, nearly three years later, still next to my bed.Back then, I read it and lots of other books, looking for answers to questions. Lucy, my first grandchild, my oldest daughter's baby, was born with an extra chromosome…

The conference at Brandeis University was for teachers and it was sold out.

I too went to learn, but I likely wouldn't have gone before Lucy came into our lives.