Kayla put my hand on the rounded side of her belly and held it there.  She was smiling and holding still, and said to wait for it.

Then she pushed in slightly with her fingers, three light taps, just above my hand.  There was a tap against my hand, from the inside.

She laughed and tapped again, and there was another tap from inside.

My astonishment at those first taps has been followed by many attempts, on my part, to get an answer from the little one.  She responds to my cues by shifting her weight inside of Kayla, or with kicks or light touches.  Sometimes she doesn’t answer, and I wait for long moments, and there is nothing.

The nights are cold now, and it is very cold in our room without a heater, and we can see our breath as we lay down for sleep.  Lying next to Kayla, nine months along, in the quiet dark, my hand on the tight skin of her belly, tapping, waiting for a reply, and drifting to sleep, the scene changes.  The new setting is from memory:  the inside of a tent on the ledge of a mountain.

It was too early in the year for that trip, and I knew it was risky, with winter still clinging to the mountains.  But it was the only time I could get off work, and I had the youthful confidence of one who does not know the true weight of snow.

It was a cross-country trek, a hundred miles through the back country, ten or twelve days if all went well, breaking brush through untouched forest, far from roads or trails.  The plan to was navigate the terrain below the snow line all the way to the river, then down a trail to a highway, then hitchhike back to my car.

It was several days into the hike–deep into the mountains, through towering forests with soft pine-needle floors, across steep ledges, alpine meadows, chest-burning ascents, the views opening up at the lower summits, a vertical white wall of barren 13,000 feet peaks to the front, the river somewhere in the unseen distance–when the blizzard came.

A dark wall of clouds rolled over the mountains and consumed me where I was hurriedly trying to descend to a lower altitude.  At first the sleet came at an angle, then turned to hard pellets of snow, then the sky went nearly black with snow and it did not stop coming down for two days.

It was difficult to walk in the slush after a short time, and impossible to see with the snow blowing like needles into my face, and as the powder created a new surface there was no way to know what was beneath each step on the white crust; solid ground, a fallen tree, a chasm twenty feet deep.  I found a windbreak on a ledge next to a boulder with a tall fir tree on each side, and set up the tent.

There was nothing to read in that tent, nothing to do but to conserve food and water, to freeze to the core, to toss and turn, to lay and think, my stormy history playing in my head, my dreams for the future shrinking to one or two very definite short term goals. The snow piled up continually with a weight to crush my tiny hollow space on the side of the mountain.

Finally, on the third morning, the sun rose and began to melt the snow.  After much miserable trudging, after sliding and tumbling in the knee-high slush, switching back and forth downward across snow-covered rocks and brush, the branches of trees dropping huge wet clumps in a bitter second snowfall, and descending finally into the green forest and the wet green grass, and at last down to the river, the water roaring and rushing over boulders and far above the banks, I was able to find a way back to the world.

But now, in this dream, I was back inside that tent on the side of the mountain, so dark at night I could not see my hands, and nearly as dark in the day, with the opaque light showing beige through the tent-walls, until the snow piled up again to create a new frozen darkness.

Except now, I was holding our baby, tiny, perfectly silent, but warm and alive and curling and uncurling against my chest.  I pulled her close and covered her in a fold of the sleeping bag.  We reached up together, feeling the smooth contours of the tent wall with our fingertips, watching our breath, my breath rushing out in big dissolving clouds, hers in short small bursts.

She pulled away from the tent walls.  She was afraid that the snow piling up on the roof would collapse and bury us.

I told her not to worry, that if we tapped on the tight skin of the tent, Kayla would reach down with fingers like the branches of a fir tree, and tap lightly from the other side.

I told her in the dream that everything would be okay; that we would find a way down from this mountain, down to the rushing river—that we would sleep soon in our own warm bed, covered in blankets, with Kayla looking down at us.

Kayla and I attended a marriage and family seminar at the Baptist Church in Corpus Christi.  The preacher who led the class said the main thing to know about children is that you have to talk straight to them about ‘the business’.

He said to never use cute names for body parts, and not to use pseudonyms for the birds and the bees, which only causes confusion, and creates trouble later on.  Especially with daughters, he said, dads must have the courage to tell it straight.

So, our little girl, at five years old, while we were all sitting at the table, surprised us with some awkward anatomical questions.  I graciously yielded the floor to Kayla so they could have ‘the discussion’, and I went outside for some pressing work that couldn’t wait another moment, like making sure the grass was still growing.

Later that evening, the little one came and sat down next me on the couch and gave me a serious look.  She said she had something important to tell me.

“Yes, ma’am?” I said.

“Daddy, girls have China.”

“Girls have what?” I said.

“Girls have China,” she said.  “I know all about it.”

I knew that Kayla had taught her the proper anatomical names, like the preacher told us to do.  The little one had obviously misunderstood the terms, and it was up to me to straighten it out.

“That’s right,” I said.  “Girls have China.  And do you know what they have in China?”

“No, what?”

“In China, they have big cuddly koala bears!” I said.

“Oh, I love koala bears, they are so cute!” she said.  “What else do they have in China?”

“In China, they have big cuddly koala bears and soft fluffy white tigers and really good Chinese food.”

“Oh Daddy!  I love all of those things!” she said.

“That’s right, so always remember, girls have China, and boys have Africa,” I said, hoping to take the discussion in a different direction.

“Daddy,” she said, “that’s not right.  Boys don’t have Africa.”

“They don’t?  What do boys have?”

“Girls have China and boys have peanuts,” she said.

“That’s right!  Boys have peanuts!  And you know that you are really, really allergic to peanuts, right?”

“I am?” she said.

“Yes, you are now,” I said.  “Really allergic.  You will be allergic to peanuts until you are 30 years old.  Got it?”

Kayla and I had an appointment yesterday to have family pictures taken on our farm, but while we were waiting for the photographer to arrive, this winter storm blew in.

The temperature dropped from 70 degrees to 40 degrees in about an hour, and the sky turned dark and gray.  We had to reschedule with the photographer for next week, when, hopefully, there will be more sunshine and less cold wind.

But I had already dragged our fancy green chair out to a pasture, and Kayla had her red pants on, so I went back to the house for my camera.  Emma may want to look at this someday.  I took these pictures of Kayla, eight months pregnant, as the last of the charcoal light drained from the sky.

I finally could see the rounded curve of her.  It was funny to be this far along and just now to see her.

Outside the windows, the sky turned gray and white with a summer storm.  In the far distance, the mountains we had slept in the night before were purple, and they were not cold and rainy for us anymore.

Kayla turned to the side so I could get a picture with the camera phone, and held the dress back to show me.

I had already felt her moving beneath the skin, the little arms reaching, the kicks, gentle at first, then more insistent, the tension curling and uncurling beneath the surface.

And now, finally, looking at Kayla, standing like a statue, her hands on the rounded curve, I can see the outline of our little girl.

She will come into full view on January 1, 2014.

On the top floor of the Museum of Art in Denver

On our drive back from a friend’s wedding in Austin, Kayla and I stopped at a place I know on the Guadalupe River.  It is a beautiful spot.  The brush opens at the bank to form a smooth sandy beach.  Oak and pecan trees tower over the river casting dappled light and shadows on the water.

I only meant for us to stop and admire the scenery in our fancy clothes, but her satin dress was instantly on a branch, and she dove into the green water.

“What are you waiting for?” she said from the middle of the river.  She laughed out loud from the cold water and her voice rang in the forest and she swam backward taunting me and splashing water.

I looked up and down the river.  I was still wearing my suit jacket.  “Come on!” she said, “no one will ever find out!”

I have never wished I could paint so much as that afternoon, to paint the gold of the sun on her skin, the different gold of her hair, the soft white outline of her arms, her shoulders, her face–her eyes a deeper green than the green flowing water.

“Come on, you big chicken!” she said.  She started making bok bok bok chicken noises, and then went under the water and came back up swimming.  The birds sang in the high in the branches of the trees.

She held herself in the middle of the river, waiting for me, her face glowing above the surface of the water, and I swam to her.

I love it when Kayla comes home from work, in her nice dress, and comes out to the garden to tell me it’s time for Wednesday Bible class.  Then, she starts weeding and working in the garden, and after a while we are both working, with her still in her nice dress.

And then she sees me through the vegetables, taking pictures of her, and now it is really time to go.