From Green Freedom:

CHAPTER ONE LUKE

On the day our daughter arrives, we have gone a few blocks from home to check out a Lambretta motor scooter that someone has for sale. Annie climbs on the seat and straddles my back while I take it for a test run around the neighborhood. It is a beautiful, clear evening, still very light and warm but with the first pink edges of a lazy sunset just starting in the west, and there is a fragrance of clover in the air and the distant hint of charbroiled burgers from someone’s backyard grill.

Annie’s hair whips around in the breeze, and if anyone notices us at all, across the well-tended yards and gardens and the vacant lots like generous meadows, they see a red-bearded young man with muscular arms carefully guiding a motor scooter up and down the quiet village streets of Yellow Springs, Ohio, and a beautiful young woman who resembles Queen Brunhilde or an angel, with windswept blonde hair three feet long, clinging to him; and if they look a little closer or a little longer, they will notice too that the angel is very pregnant.

I remember slowing down, cruising to a stop at one corner, catching the weight of us on one foot, and Annie saying, “Hold on a minute.” She climbs off and duckwalks a few steps and touches her skirt.

“Are you all right?” I say.

“I think my water just broke.”

“Does it feel all right?”

“Just wet is all.”

“Well, good for you,” I say. “Get on, and I’ll take you back home.” I kiss her on the mouth, and she straddles me
again, and we putt-putt off down the street even more carefully than before.