Twenty summers I have lived, and never held a thing so new that had not first come squalling from a ewe.
The lord's daughter was brought to bed a fortnight past, and I was let to look upon the babe, though I stood far back for the mud on me. So small. Smaller than a lamb, and pinker, and wrapped in cloth finer than any shirt I shall wear before I am buried.
It made no work of anything. It did not fetch water. It did not gather sticks. It only lay in its mother's arms and breathed, and every soul in the hall watched it breathe as though breathing were a wonder, and I suppose it is, for I have seen how easily it stops.
Here is the strange thing. No one bid the child do aught. In my house a babe that lives past its first winter is soon set to scaring crows and minding the pig. But this one they held. They passed it hand to hand, and grown men, hard men, went soft and foolish over it, murmuring like doves. So much fuss, and the small thing giving nothing back but its weight and its warmth.
I thought it idleness. Then it curled its whole hand round the tip of my one finger and would not let go, and held on with a strength I did not think it had.
The good Lord asks less of us at the start than we suppose. Only that we be held, and hold back.
The labor comes after, and lasts until we are put in the ground.