Photo by Ian Cumming

We live next to a marsh, which is surrounded by the Quinnipiac River, and the river rises and falls with the tides of the Long Island Sound. In October the grasses of the marsh paled from emerald to one hundred experiments in gold, and I spent most of my pregnant quiet time looking to the marsh, searching for signs. The fall migration brought three great blue herons to the threshold of our home, Hemingway Creek—a ribbon of silver water that separates us from and ties us to the marsh; it is where the domain of the birds begins. Morning and evening they were there, stalking, staring, watching. Years ago my husband, Adam, and I agreed that our first daughter would be named Heron. For the first time during my pregnancy, the great blues offered a silent suggestion that the person waiting patiently inside me was a girl-child.