I look into their faces. They are both very young. They were little boys a couple years ago, I can tell.

I feel simultaneously intensely insignificant and hyperaware of how important everyone is.

Do you remember everything you’ve ever done with your hands?

I feel strangely derailed by this gesture. The image of Eleanor committing something I said offhand to her memory, spending her money, and gifting me this makes me feel, for some reason, heartbroken.

Everyone in this room has managed to grow old despite how easy it is to die. They all escaped their childhoods alive despite tuberculosis, polio, and whatever other horrible illnesses afflicted humanity when they were kids. They drove without seat belts, in cars full of cigarette smoke. They survived literal wars. Terrible things have probably

I was four years old when Eli was born. We didn’t know if he would be a boy or a girl. I wanted him to be a girl. I thought boys and girls were on opposite teams, and that if he was a boy it would mean that I would have to watch boy TV.

I stare intensely at their hands as they shake mine. Their skin is wrinkled, transparent, and spotty. I think about how their hands were once baby hands. I think about babies gripping adults’ fingers. I think about how these people have probably had their own babies and held them with the same hands.

Maybe if I scream as loudly as I can, I will be given the personal space I need to breathe in air that others haven’t already exhaled.