I looked down at the little 6 month old baby my friend was rocking in her arms.

“I love it when she’s like this,” the new mom whispered to me.

I gave her the best smile I could muster and gazed back down at Gillian. I felt a twitch of bitterness at my lips and tried to suppress it. If this was my baby, I wouldn’t have done something so stupid and painful like piercing her ears before she could even tell me she wanted it, I thought. If this was my baby…

It wasn’t my baby, and “if this was my baby” would be the only thing I could ever say. Primarily by choice and, as I recently discovered, by biology, I was never having children. At the time, I swear I couldn’t understand the distance growing between Gillian’s mom and me. But, even though I was Gillian’s godmother, I didn’t care to do anything about what I could feel was the start of the demise of our 16 year friendship.