Baby Me arrived at St. Michael's Hospital in 1960 with blond hair, blue eyes, and a hunger for everything. She wanted every face, every touch, every moment someone would pick her up. When warm hands lifted her, she knew she was wanted. When they set her down, she waited, believing someone would always come back. This was her world: the cycle of being held and being set down and being lifted again. She didn't know yet that wanting everything meant wanting something that could change. Therefore, the small white house became her kingdom. Her father's hands were the warmest of all. He picked her up when she cried and when she didn't cry. He carried her from room to room, showing her the window glass, the door handles, the texture of the walls. She reached for his face and he let her. She grabbed his finger and he waited. Every time he set her down, he came back. Every single time. But one day the wicker bassinet appeared in the corner of the room. It rocked on curved wooden runners, empty and waiting. Her father's hands still lifted her, but now they moved faster. He set her down more often. His voice changed pitch when he spoke to someone else, someone she couldn't see yet. The warm hands grew distracted. When her father finally brought the bundle home and placed it in the bassinet, Baby Me watched from across the room. The bundle made noise. It moved. Her father's hands hovered over it the way they used to hover over her. She waited to be picked up, practicing the patience she had learned. But the hands stayed where they were. Someone always comes, she told herself. Someone always comes. The bassinet rocked. The hands stayed warm. But they didn't reach for her.

But someone did come, eventually. The hands picked her up again, though not as often. The cycle continued, but the rhythm had changed. Her father still carried her sometimes, still showed her the world through windows and doorways. Then came the Sundays. Her father's hands would lift her in the morning and carry her outside to the car. Just the two of them. The bundle stayed behind with someone else's hands. The car moved and the world rushed past the window. She pressed her face against the glass and watched trees blur into green streaks. Her father's voice filled the space between them, warm like his hands. They passed a building with yellow windows and smoke rising from its chimney. She reached toward it as they drove by. The cottage sat at the end of a long road, dark wood against blue water. Her father carried her up the wooden steps where an old instrument hung on the porch rail, its curved wood catching sunlight. He let her touch the smooth surface before opening the door. Inside, his hands stayed close. He showed her the stones around the fireplace, the cool glass of the windows facing the bay, the rough texture of the wooden beams. No one interrupted. No one cried from another room. When she reached for his face, he waited. When she grabbed his finger, he didn't pull away. But the bundle grew. It made different sounds now, sounds that pulled her father's attention even on Sunday mornings. One week the bundle came with them to the cottage. Then it came every time. Her father's hands divided themselves between two bodies in the car, two sets of needs at the cottage. She still got the Sundays, but she had to share them now. The cycle changed again. Someone always came, but someone else always came too. She learned to wait longer. She learned that wanting everything meant watching the warm hands reach for someone else first.

The cottage became a pattern of smells and sounds. Wood smoke and salt water. Her father's voice calling out when the car turned onto the dirt road. The bundle's higher sounds mixing with his deeper ones. But inside, when the door opened, there were other voices too. The older woman's hands lifted her and carried her to a blue table already covered with bowls and plates. Steam rose from everything. The meat smell was rich and dark, nothing like milk. Potatoes sat white and smooth in one bowl. Green and orange pieces floated in another. She reached for the orange ones but the woman sat her down in a high seat with wooden bars around it. The bundle got hands. She got the bars. She pushed against them and made her wanting sound, the one that usually brought warm hands back. The woman touched her head once, then turned away to carry more food to the table. Her father's hands stayed on the bundle. After the eating, smoke smell filled the room. Sweet and sharp at once. An old man sat near the stone fireplace holding a curved wooden thing with patterns carved into it. He put it to his mouth and the smoke came out. She watched the smoke rise and curl toward the ceiling. Then he stood and took down something else from the wall, something with a long neck and strings. He tucked it under his chin. When he pulled another piece of wood across the strings, sound came out that made her whole body feel different. High and low at the same time. The woman picked up a smaller instrument and her voice joined the violin's cry. The sounds wrapped around each other like the smoke wrapped around the light from the fire. She stopped pushing at the bars. Her hands went still. The music moved through her the way her father's heartbeat used to when he held her close for a long time. She didn't need to touch it to feel it. The violin sang and the woman's voice answered and she realized something new: warm hands weren't the only way to not be alone. Sound could fill the empty spaces too. When the song ended and the woman finally lifted her from the high seat, she didn't make her wanting sound. She had already gotten something, just not what she'd been reaching for.

The next time new sounds came, they brought her somewhere else. Car sounds, then voices that weren't her father's or the woman's from the cottage. Different hands picked her up, moved her from place to place. They carried her into a room with bright lights that made her squint. Cold air touched her skin. Many voices bounced off hard walls. She was passed to new hands — smooth hands, not warm like her father's, but not cold either. The woman holding her smelled like flowers and something sharp underneath. More women stood nearby wearing the same smell, all dressed in dark colors with shiny things at their throats. One held a large piece of paper with numbers on it, bigger than any paper she'd seen before. Flash bulbs popped. She flinched and made her wanting sound, reaching for anyone who might have warm hands. But the flower-smell woman just shifted her weight and smiled at something across the room. An old man in a dark suit moved closer. His face had deep lines around the eyes. He reached toward her and the flower-smell woman turned her body so the old man could touch her head. His hand came down gentle but distant, the way someone touches something they're supposed to touch, not something they want to hold. She looked up at his face. He was smiling but his eyes were looking past her, toward the flash bulbs. She reached for him anyway, testing. His hand pulled back. The woman holding her laughed a light laugh that had no warmth in it and turned her toward more cameras. The wanting sound built in her throat but she swallowed it down. These hands weren't here for her. She was here for them. When they finally put her down in her father's arms again, she pressed her face against his shirt and went quiet. The old man and the flower-smell women moved away toward tables with food on them. She had learned something she couldn't unlearn: some holding was just for show. Some smiles were just faces people made while looking at something else. Her father's hands were warm and real, and now she knew the difference wasn't just in temperature. It was in whether the hands forgot about you while they were still touching you. She tucked her head under his chin and felt his heartbeat. This was the kind of holding that remembered she was there.

After the bright lights and cold hands that forgot about her, she spent more time in rooms with fewer people. Mom picked her up more often now, her hands smaller than Dad's but steady. The holding felt different — practical, not lingering — but Mom never looked past her while touching her. One morning Mom dressed her in something stiff that scratched at her neck and carried her to the car. The bundle came too, wearing matching fabric. They drove until the houses looked different, then stopped in front of a white house with a pear tree beside it. Mom lifted them both out and set them on grass that felt cool under her legs. An old man with a camera stood beside a small brown pony that shifted its weight from hoof to hoof. The pony's side rose and fell with breathing. Its smell was strong and alive, like nothing she'd touched before. Mom picked up the bundle first and the man lifted it onto the pony's back. The bundle's face crumpled immediately. Its mouth opened and the crying started, loud and helpless. Mom's hands reached up but didn't take it down, just steadied it while the man moved behind his camera. Flash bulbs popped. The bundle wailed harder. She watched from the grass, taking it in — the pony's patient stillness, the bundle's fear, Mom's hands that stayed but didn't rescue. When they finally lifted the bundle off, Mom turned and reached for her. The man's hands were quick and sure as he set her on the pony's warm back. Her fingers found coarse hair, solid muscle underneath. The pony's breathing moved through her legs. She looked down at Mom's face and Mom was looking right back at her, not at the camera, not past her. The wanting rose in her — not to be picked up, but to stay exactly here, claimed by this moment. The flash went off. She didn't flinch. The pony shifted and she felt its aliveness against her skin, this creature that was real and here and holding her up. When the man reached to lift her down, she knew something the bundle didn't: being put somewhere wasn't the same as being left. Mom's hands were already waiting.

The pony session ended and the warm feeling stayed with her through the days after. Then one morning Mom dressed her and the bundle in underwear only, nothing else. Dad carried them both to the car and they drove to a building that smelled sharp and clean. Inside, the floors gleamed white and stretched long ahead. People in white coats stood in a group at the far end, watching. Mom set her down on the cold floor beside the bundle. One of the white coats pointed down the hallway and said something to Mom about walking. Mom's hands left her shoulders. The bundle started forward, uncertain, and she followed because that's what the hands had directed them to do. But halfway down the bright hallway she realized no one was walking with them. The white coats were just standing there, staring. Their eyes moved over her bare skin like the camera flash had, except colder. She stopped walking. The wanting rose sharp in her chest — not to keep going, but to be picked up right now. Mom called her name from behind. She turned and saw Mom's arms hanging at her sides, not reaching. The white coats wrote things on papers. One of them gestured for her to keep walking. She looked down at her own bare legs against the bright floor and understood: they wanted to see her move, not hold her. She was supposed to keep walking alone while strangers watched. The bundle had already reached the end and stood waiting. She took one more step, then another, but each one felt wrong. Her feet wanted to run back to Mom but she kept them moving forward because Mom's voice had told her to. When she finally reached the end, Mom came and picked her up, but the hands felt different now — like they'd let something happen that shouldn't have. That night she lay in her crib and the sharp smell still clung to her skin. She'd walked when they told her to walk, kept moving when she wanted to stop, and Mom's hands had stayed back the whole time. She'd learned something new: sometimes the warm hands put you down and then don't come, even when you need them to. Sometimes they choose to stand back and let strangers look at you instead. The bundle slept in the bassinet across the room, but she stayed awake, testing the weight of this knowledge. The waiting felt different now. Heavier.

The days passed and the sharp smell faded from her skin, but the heaviness stayed. Then one morning Dad picked her up and carried her outside to the car. Mom stayed behind with the bundle. Just the two of them this time. The train rocked and hummed beneath them. Dad held her on his lap by the window, his arm steady around her middle. She watched buildings slide past, then trees, then open fields. The rhythm felt good, like being rocked in warm arms that wouldn't set her down. Dad's hand stayed on her side the whole time. When she reached toward the window glass, he let her touch it. Cold and smooth. She pulled back and his hand was still there, warm against her ribs. The wanting that had been tight in her chest since the white hallway started to loosen. This was different from the pony, different from the cameras. Dad wasn't watching anyone else or waiting for her to do something. He was just holding her while the world moved past. The clinic smelled like the white hallway but Dad carried her inside instead of setting her down. A man in regular clothes, not a white coat, brought out metal and leather pieces and laid them on a table. He picked up her leg and held it while he wrapped the cold metal around her calf. Dad's hands stayed on her shoulders. The man buckled leather straps tight, then tighter. The metal pressed hard against her skin. She tried to pull her leg back but the man held it firm. The straps bit into her flesh. She looked up at Dad and his face was watching the man's hands, not hers. The man finished one leg and started on the other. Each buckle pulled tighter than the last. When he finally let go, her legs felt trapped, held down by something that wouldn't let go even when she wanted it to. The man told Dad something about wearing them every day. Dad nodded and lifted her off the table. On the train ride home, Dad held her the same way he had before, but her legs felt heavy and strange in his lap. The metal dug into her skin with each rock of the train. She shifted, trying to find a position that didn't hurt, but the braces moved with her. They wouldn't come off. Dad's arm stayed warm around her middle and she leaned into it, trying to feel just that and not the tightness around her calves. She understood now: some things that held you were meant to help, even when they hurt. The braces weren't like the white coats staring or the cameras flashing. They were something else. Something that would stay on her body whether she wanted them or not. Dad's hand moved to rest on her knee, right above where the metal ended. She looked down at the leather straps and the buckles and knew they would still be there tomorrow. She would have to learn to walk with them. But Dad's hand was warm and he hadn't set her down once since they left the house. That had to mean something.