It went unsaid, in the parenting books, in the chatter on the playground, in the warnings from her big sisters, that the baby needed you but also you needed the baby. They were reassuring. You could hold on to them and it was like you were holding on to life itself. You could hold on to them and nothing else seemed to matter, not the vanishing of species, not the signs of war, not the anger of your husband, the various depredations of contemporary life. A baby was so weak—why should it make you feel so invincible?
