As a young couple gears up to welcome their first child, neighbors in their small seaside town offer wisdom and support.
by Jim Dodson | illustration by Gerry O’Neill

January is a special month in our family. That’s because three members of our scattered tribe are January babies. It could have been four if I hadn’t missed my due date by two days to wind up being a February groundhog. My late father’s birthday is the 18th and my mother’s is the 24th. But our oldest child’s birthday, on the 28th, holds the true winter magic.

Back in September 1990, as we lay in bed looking up at the stars through the skylight on our first night in the house on Bailey Island, Maine, my first wife, Alison, said quietly, “Let me have your hand.”

She placed it on her belly and, for the first time ever, I felt something flutter, soft as a hummingbird.
“That’s him,” I whispered in awe. “Or her,” she said.

Friends were concerned when we told them we planned to move to an island off the coast for the winter while beginning construction of our house on the mainland.

In good weather, they pointed out, the hospital was a good 45-minute drive away — across two adjoining islands, over three narrow bridges and through three tiny villages. In bad winter weather, the trip had been known to take hours.

From Labor Day to June, only about 300 souls inhabited the durable rock island where we set up housekeeping in a fine cottage, which provided us with a 20-mile view of the coast. Within days of our arrival — news spreads fast on a small island — we’d met the folks who ran the community store, the postmistress, several lobstermen and a chatty gentleman named Bob, who was the island’s de facto mayor and chargé d’affaires of information and snowplowing.

“When the snow flies, the drifts can get pretty wicked out here,” he explained, and turned pale when we mentioned we were in the family way, due in early February. “I’m awfully glad you told me,” he said seriously. “We’ll keep an eye on you.”

A few days later, a lady at the store slipped me a scrap of paper with a phone number and said, “I heard about your situation. Call anytime if you need to — Herman’s got four-wheel drive.” Not long after that, one of the local lobstermen pulled me aside and said, “I’ve got a boat that’ll chew through anything. Just give a holler.”

Such nice folks, those island souls. While we settled in to wait for the baby, they prepared for winter snow, fixing drafts, hooking up plows, topping up the woodpile and getting buckets of sand ready. I realized how much the mariners loved the drama of winter storms. Hard weather makes good timber, as they say in the north country.

There was a dusting of snow two days before Christmas, followed by wind, arctic cold and nothing more. While the islanders scanned the skies for telltale flakes, we scanned a baby book for boy names. Everyone — I mean everyone — was certain we were going to have a boy, including yours truly.
“How about Herman,” I suggested.

Alison laughed. “You mean after the four-wheel guy?” “More as in Melville, the great white whale guy.” Given our location, I suggested other strong nautical names, including Noah, Davy Jones, Billy Budd and Horatio Hornblower — “Hank” for short.

Alison merely smiled and shook her head. Other family members chipped in several male family names.

As the winter deepened and the delivery day approached, only my wife and my dad believed the baby would be a girl.

In the meantime, the islanders grew visibly tense from the absence of snow. Snowplows sat idle; the boys around the stove grumbled over their morning coffee at the community store.

It turned out, in fact, to be the un-snowiest winter on the island in a century. Just our luck, but poor islanders. By early January, you could feel their desperation to push snow and fling sand. A few days before month’s end, Alison joked that our baby would arrive with a snowstorm. Her mouth to God’s ear.

That Friday night, as we were dining at our favorite restaurant in town, it began to snow like mad. Mainers live for the winter’s first good snow. You could see the relief in their faces. “Better late than never,” our waitress cheerfully declared as she delivered dessert. “Hate to waste my new snow tires!” Moments later, Alison’s water broke. We left our dessert behind and went straight to the hospital down the block.

The delivery doctor said we still had several hours to go. So, as mother and baby settled in, I drove out to the island to get some clothes and feed the dog. By the time I got there, a blizzard was in full force and even my four-wheel Blazer had difficulty navigating our unplowed lane. It took another two hours to get off the island, over the bridges and back to the hospital. By the time I climbed the final hill into town, the snow had stopped and a brilliant sunrise bathed a silent white world in golden light. It was a sight I’ll never forget.

I got to my wife’s side 10 minutes before the baby arrived. The next afternoon, we brought our bundled-up newborn home. The snow was so deep, we had to park at the community store and slide down the hill on our rumps to our cottage doorstep.

Stamping around, folks on the island were downright giddy. Bob was deeply relieved. Snowplows roared and news of the birth quickly spread.

Everyone who peeked at our new arrival wanted to know what we named our sweet island lad.
“Margaret Sinclair,” I proudly told them. “Maggie for short — after both of her grandmothers.” 

This article originally appeared in the January 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.