WIND ROSE

Still dewy-eyed, but less artificially so than in When Light Turns Into Night (1975), the author works some elementary sex education into the very tender, first person account of a ""birthing"" (at home, of course, attended only by old ""wiseful"" Beulah) by the sort of dungareed parents--bearded and work-booted father, long-haired and barefoot mother--who would name their firstborn Wind Rose ""'cause the wind rose warm and wild the day that you were born."" Wind Rose's mother tells her how the wind rose up also on the night ""we thought of you . . . Your father was inside me and we were wrapped so tight and close and loving. . . . Wind Rose, we had too much love for two and that was the night we thought of you."" She remembers too the nine months' anticipation, during which she stripped and soaked bark to weave a basket for the coming baby. And at last (""It didn't hurt, but such hard work""), Wind Rose emerges--""so much more than we could wonder."" With the echoing glow of Himler's black and white washes, it's a romanticized but appealing version of a story that always bears retelling.