For my in-laws, to love is to worry. When John's parents visited us from New York, his mother would get me alone and inquire delicately. After a perfect summer seafood dinner at their beach house, the same questions were fired at us. They always made attempts to know our attitude. Didn't we want kids? Or was there a problem with our marriage?

By the year my husband turned 40 and I hit the age of 35, John's parents evidently were worried about us. His older brother had produced three grandchildren. So had his younger sister. We had produced none.

By then we were wondering too. In earlier years the pressure to procreate had made us roll our eyes. In our 20's and even into our 30's, we were ambivalent about the whole idea of children. We certainly didn't regard the decision as anyone's business but our own. Besides, what was the big deal? His parents already had six grandchildren. Why did they need more from us?

John's father rarely said anything, yet I knew that she spoke for both of them. He was a retired ambassador and he liked to call himself a cranky old mail. But I knew that he cared and they fretted over us together.

Then one day we realized that we were real adults -- old enough to be somebody's parents. We had exceeded the age of youthfulness. Suddenly we felt ready for a child.

Yet to hope does not always mean receiving. By the time I was 35, John and I had been"trying"for three years, however, I did not get pregnant. It seemed that Mother Nature was displeased. Our sex life became a lab experiment, and our emotional life wavered monthly between hidden optimism and ruined expectations. Then finally, one day in January. The pregnancy test turned pink. John and I stared repeatedly at the supernatural stick in excitement and could not firmly believe. Was this true? Should we tell everyone?

We decided to tell his parents on February 15, the day John's father would turn 70. We were planning to surprise him by going up a few days early and to join the family for a birthday dinner at an elegant New York City restaurant. By then I would be six weeks pregnant. What an idea it would be to give him the ultimate gift -- the news that, at long last, we would add a baby to the family.

As a baby became central to our hopes, I better understood my in-laws' interference. Now in their sliver years, they took the connection between their later years of life and their children and grandchildren for their greatest pleasure. Our child would provide both us and them with a lifeline to the future.

We watched the news late into the night, huddled beside the fireplace as the snow continued to fall. Drinking hot tea and hot alcohol, we debated whether to drive out the next day. Finally, we acceded to the decision that the event meant too much not to gamble on it. My brother-in-law, a can-do man who inspires absolute confidence, was cautious but willing to take the wheel.

The next morning we loaded into their station wagon -- four edgy adults, three excited young boys and a golden retriever. Then we spent eight tense hours driving north on icy highways in a whirling blizzard.

We flew into Baltimore, planning to drive to New York the next day with John's sister and her family. But nature was not cooperative. That was the winter of 1960, the year that broke records of snowfall on the East Coast. A typhoon blew up then. And the weather forecasts issued stern warnings not to drive the next day.

When we finally arrived t hat night, the landscape of the outskirts of New York had been transformed into a Nordic paradise. John's father still had no idea we were coming. Wrapped in a huge thermal coat. John knocked on the front door. "How hard it is snowing!"He said to his dad. When his puzzled father finally recognized him and ascertained what really happened, he sank back into a chair. How had we appeared from Texas in the midst of a bleak snowstorm so fierce that airports had canceled flights? All of us thought that to make the old man stunned and pleased was worth the freezing on the long journey.

That night the eight adults went out for a formal makeup birthday banquet at a restaurant. The atmosphere was strange and bittersweet. A 70th birthday celebration innately has a dark note; to make a fuss of it is to acknowledge that the life is finite. Death may come at any hour. Aching with cramps and grief, I had wanted to stay home in bed. The sufferings spoiled my appetite. But John and his family had insisted on my joining them, and they were right. Our communal dinner honored our father's long life. We were family; sharing great meals was our glue and our comfort. We all drowned our complicated emotions in the toasts to my father-in-law.

We didn't make it into the city for our elegant dinner: the roads and bridges were Virtually in accessible. We ended up eating at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant. Excited by our successful adventure, we made a noisy, festive party around the big family table. John and I exchanged a glance -- now? Then I respectfully presented his father with a gift-wrapped box. He opened it, stared bewildered at our gift, a baby doll in a fabric fashioned from a Texas flag. He held up the doll and kept saying"Oh my Cod!"with watering blue eyes. It traveled around the table, everyone congratulated us.

The next morning, I started to bleed and to feel pain. Then to bleed more. Both my sisters-in-law had suffered troublesome pregnancies. Late that afternoon they sat with me and John in his boyhood bedroom as we struggled to face the matter. I found a spiritual comfort from their concern and anxiety. A call to my doctor confirmed the terrible truth: I had probably had an abortion.

I saw the doll lying abandoned in the back of my sister-in-law's station wagon. Its face smiled up at me mockingly. Let them throw it out. I thought. I wished we had never given my father-in-law that absurd baby doll.

Back home. John and I were struck down by the power of our grief. Neither of us could drag ourselves to work. We felt like a couple of baggage in a locker. After we had tried so long and got pregnant, the miscarriage was a tough, depressing loss. And to have lost the pregnancy so publicly made it even worse.

But once again, nature surprised us. Two months later, almost by accident, I turned up pregnant -- a miracle! This time, we superstitiously kept the news to ourselves for a full three months. During those long days, we barely even allowed ourselves to believe in the pregnancy. If we had no expectations, then maybe we couldn't be hurt. But despite our fears, this one was a keeper. The little being inside me lived and blossomed, grasped kicked, and together we grew into fullness.

The weather cleared the next day, and we flew home. On the way to the airport,

The next morning, when John's mother Game down to breakfast, she found the doll dressed in the Texas flag. Unknown to US, my old father-in-law had kept the little darling dull tucked away for a year. Before placing the doll next to his wife's plate, he had taped a note to it. It read"Hi, I'm Addie."

He understood what we did not: life sometimes demands more patience than you can bear. He hadn't given up hope. Our happiness didn't come in the form we first expected, but it was delivered just the same.

On January 31, our daughter, Addie, was born. When she emerged after a long, hard labor, I asked for her to be placed skin-to-skin on my chest. She felt warm and solid and delicious. We gazed into each other's eyes and I was instantly in love. The many obstacles that John and I had Overcome made US go into raptures over the birth of the little being. Among our most joyous phone calls was the one to his parents. We did it! She's here! She's perfect!

I tried to make out the intricate structure of individual snowflakes, to Capture their unique beauty. But they melted on my hand. So I gave up and watched as they united into white drifts on our deck, gathering like the fullness of our family's life.

It rarely snows in Austin. Texas, but on Addle's first birthday, the sky turned gray, then it snowed. The city was in white. I bundled up our sweet girl and carried her outside SO that she could feel and taste the falling snow a rare birthday gift from nature. We laughed as we caught snowflakes on our tongues. I hadn't seen snow myself since that East Coast storm two years before. Then it had been accompanied by an emotional blizzard. Now I watched it fall gently as I cradled my giggling daughter in my arms. I had learned a lot about love, hope and being a family in two years' time.