They hand you the baby like a bomb, both arms out, everyone in the room suddenly speaking in that low, careful voice you use around things that might break.
And the thing is, it might. That's not a figure of speech. The neck can't hold the head yet. The skull isn't finished, there's a soft spot on top where you can watch the pulse move under the skin. You can feel how little there is between this creature and everything that could go wrong. A few pounds. A blanket. Your own two hands, which you are now not entirely sure how to work.
People think what I saw up there was the whole planet, this big blue thing. What actually stayed with me was the atmosphere. From orbit it's a line. A thin bright edge where the black meets the color, and it's thinner than you'd ever believe. The whole thing we breathe, every storm, every bird, every last breath any person has ever taken, is a layer thinner than the shell on an egg. That's it. That's what's holding everybody in.
So I stand there in the recliner light with somebody's grandkid and I can feel it again. That same margin. The gap between fine and not fine, and how thin it is, and how nobody in the room is panicking, they're just laughing and taking pictures.
The baby yawns. Grips my finger without deciding to.
Nothing that small should be able to hold a grown man that still.