He was impossibly small, in a tiny handmade knitted cap, a delicate tube helping his fragile lungs breathe.

I had spent my whole adult life standing on high-rise steel in southern thunderstorms without a shred of fear, and the sight of that four-pound baby terrified me more completely than anything ever had.

“You can touch him, very gently,” the nurse said, guiding my hand to the round opening in the side of the incubator.

I reached in and laid my index finger against his tiny hand, and in an instant his impossibly small fingers closed around mine and gripped with a strength that undid me.

I had to turn my face away as my eyes filled.