Silke was born in winter. Not in new winter, but in midwinter. She grew to life in a summer and autumn womb. She came to life in gray cloud and bleak mist, early in the morning.

If Silke saw anything on her arrival, she did not see that the mists were bleak. She saw that the sky was full of fluid and light and felt comforted by the milky, close-drawn clouds. She knew the lavender and bread smell of her grandmother who carried her from room to room, who took her to the bed where her mother slept as if every hour were night. The voice she recognized first was the grandmother’s voice, the one that began instantly to tell her what the world was made of. Informed by that voice Silke’s swimming infant eyes searched through the gloom of early vision to recognize crow feather, wishbone, sand dollar, and in spring—as the world and her vision brightened— pussy willow, apple blossom, robin’s egg. And in summer, when she looked about her from the fullness of her round contented body she knew and reached for tree frog, cherry, kelp crab, moth.