1911. Basswood leaves powdered with dust overhang the courting couples and the table of sweet ices. Farm girls fragrant as peonies in their white mutton-leg-sleeves stroll the country church lawn. In stiff collars and middle-parted hair, the farm boys pitch horseshoes. I wear an apron and my wide-brimmed hat. Between scooping, my hands splash in the wash bowl. The ice cream I helped churn with rock salt breathes its cold kisses into the July heat. I know the seed swells inside me. I hum to myself as I pare the apricots thin and chop the ice fine. The horses unharnessed from the ice wagon graze the blue grass that thickens next to the creek. Couples share the stereoscope and view picture cards of faraway places. They spoon ice cream perfumed with orange blossom into each other’s mouths, they touch breath as they sort the picture cards. Snap snap goes the fingers of the pastor’s wife. Big-Headed Anna, fetch more ice, then more churning. Anna, we need the wooden crate brought from the water. I kneel next to the creek, fishing for the cream crate. A waggle of boys follows me. They skip stones at the tree stump in the stream’s middle that raises its half-drowned massive head, as if a dog lifting its moss-painted muzzle and snout. That’s you, Big-Headed Anna. I press cold palms to my flushed face. They see my belly, but will not believe. Who would do that? I wasn’t expected to take in the air of this world long, I was left to expire beside my dying mother, and now I carry life inside me. I will name my child after the giant trees that rain insects onto the water, so he or she does not forget the budding and singing in tree-time and insect generations, its chitter and scat. He won’t be born in an overcast of sadness, a dead mother in its thickness, and the deeper his childhood rows him, he’ll find no weeping. I listen to my heart beating its small river of footsteps. I hug my stomach and wonder if my son, safe in womb-water, will like the color red, the bleed of cherries and mulberries, or will it be green my baby loves, the forest world of frogs and grass. I’ll name him so that he will be ever thankful to life, which comes from the giver. If God walks on this earth, He is water.