The Hand

My baby lay there, cradled in my arms, finally taking a much needed nap within a large, crowded room.  While I sat rocking my sweet sleeping baby, a hand reach from behind and grasped my baby's huge cheeks.  

...SQUISH...

Not like a little jiggle of the fleshy baby face.  Imagine the force and speed of two fingers snapping, only with a big chubby baby face between the fingers.  

(You just snapped, didn't you?)

His shocked eyes flew open, his back arched and his hands involuntarily reached out.  He was breathing in to scream when...

...SQUISH...

The hand had returned, with even more resolve to awaken my slumbering babe.  His head began to fitfully turn from side to side as his arms and legs flailed about.  And then, he flipped out.  The bystander next to me was visibly upset, and turned to her husband to say, "I would be so mad if that were my baby." 

I stood up and buried my outraged infant into my chest.   I turned and looked into the set of smiling eyes, and I watched as the offending hands clapped together in quick succession, and then stretched toward my restless child...

...and the laughing voice said, "Let me hold the baby."