Earlier on the day of the storm, though, when her pregnant partner Britt began experiencing contractions, more than two weeks ahead of her due date, Heather had had a flash of clear thinking.

"I was sure the pains were no big deal, just false labor," said Britt afterward. "But Heather had this insight. Somehow she knew it was the real thing."

Heather kept close to Britt's side. In the early evening she insisted that Britt check with an on-call obstetrician, and they put in motion plans to go to Sibley Hospital.  They procured Britt's mother Pam to babysit for their three-year-old son Beck, and they alerted a friend, Kerri Larkin, who they sometimes call "Aunt Kerri" or more kiddingly "Sexy Kerri," to drive them in her four-wheeler to the hospital.

Heather continued to worry. "Are you sure you don't want me to call the squad?"

But Britt had no qualms. "We can make it to Sibley."

Kerri successfully navigated the snowy streets from her house on Greenwood Avenue about a mile to Allegheny and parked at the bottom of the sledding hill.  Leaving Britt at rest in bed Heather carried a suitcase to the car.  Mark Burlinson and his daughter Ellie were trudging up with a sled. He asked about the suitcase, and Heather explained.

"We'll shovel a path," Mark volunteered in a cheerleading way, and he signaled other sledders, who included Roger Schlegel, last year's surprise mayoral candidate.

Heather returned to her house, feeling a bit of reassurance, but it all vanished when she saw Britt collapsed on the floor, a leg and an arm under the Christmas tree. Britt had gotten out of bed but managed only a few steps. "She was writhing in pain.  It was hard to remain calm."

After dialing an emergency dispatcher, Heather, feeling "dazed" and acting on impulse, announced to the men shoveling outside, "I think the baby is coming."

Mark told his daughter, "Go get Mommy."

Tracy Kaufman, who is Mark's wife and who has an impressively large I-phone directory, was in her living room, uncorking a vintner's special for the indoor crowd. "We all sobered up immediately," she said afterward.

As soon as Tracy took stock of the situation, she asked Heather, "Should I call Annie?"

"Who is she?"

"She's a midwife. A couple blocks over."

"Yes, yes, please!"

Annie Rohlin, who has been a midwife for 13 years, answered Tracy's call, switched off a cartoon movie, pulled on boots, threw on a coat, yelled "I've got to go" to her two teenage sons, slammed the door behind her, faced a fresh wind and broke into a galloping gait.  If it seems an exaggeration to say that Annie, no spring chicken, was hoofing it at top speed Tracy would disagree: "It was like I'd just hung up, and she magically appeared." And Heather would say, "I swear it was only 30 seconds."

Had Annie not, in her haste, forgotten Heather and Britt's address she might have reached the house even faster. Instead she shouted to everyone on the street, "Which house? Which house?"

By this time the festive atmosphere on the hill had given way to nervous pandemonium. The emergency crews were trying to find traction for their stalled vehicles.  Two firefighters dug frantically toward hard pavement. Mark had approached and, with some impatience, encouraged them to walk the rest of the way.

"Please, sir, try to be calm," a man in charge said, but then the paramedics did decide to abandon the ambulance.

In those moments, as Annie and the paramedics hurried down and as Heather and Tracy stood on the sidewalk and motioned, Britt gave birth by the tree. Only Pam, her mother, was with her. Pam is a nurse but had never delivered a baby.  She crouched next to Britt and held the little boy scant inches off the floor. She implored, "Cry, baby, cry!"

Annie came through the open door and later gave this account: "Pam couldn't lift him up because the umbilical cord was extra short, and there was blood everywhere. It was like a barn, the wind blowing in. But he was pink and screaming and very much alive."

The medical work at hand was quickly divided.  The serenely good-natured Annie tended to Britt, who, after her first childbirth, had scared the doctors by hemorrhaging badly.  "The firefighters helped, and we very carefully took out the placenta."

A snow clog still on one foot, Britt whispered and beckoned anxiously for her glasses.  Her voice got louder until the glasses were found and she could gaze at her baby, already named Cash, after Johnny-the-Man-in-Black.

Outside, the smoothly packed trails of the sledding hill were being cleared away. With spectacular enthusiasm Mark, Roger and other neighbors opened the street, and the fire truck and ambulance rolled to the blue house.  Bundled up, Cash and Britt were sirened to Washington Adventist Hospital.

By all that is holy, the next day's news does not belong in this narrative, and yet it must be reported. Out of the blue, with no warning, Britt and Heather learned from the hospital doctors that Cash has Down syndrome. "It sent us reeling," Heather said. "Hadn't we been through enough?"

Several days went by, then weeks, and on the morning of January 23, bright and sunny, the two moms, accompanied by a photographer, took Cash into their front yard of the home that's been theirs since May of 2006.  They had moved here from the District after a long, frustrating search for four affordable walls inside Takoma Park, after, in fact, giving up the search, only to happen upon this modest treasure on Allegheny Avenue with a blue face, a pillared porch and rows of sunlit windows.

The photographer directed Britt and Heather to hold Cash and pose against a stone wall. Their Christmas tree lay a few feet away, finally discarded.  They had kept it in the front room, watered and ornamented well beyond its prime.  "It was a reminder of that night, which was so incredible," Britt said.

"What we've realized is that Cash is also incredible and special," Heather added.  "It's going to be hard for him, and hard for us, no question, but we're so happy to have him."
 
The photographer was giving more directions - "Move there, okay, yes" - but was talking now to "Aunt Kerri" and Pam and Mark and Tracy and their daughters and Annie and Roger and his wife Sasha and their kids and a few more from the shoveling gang. Heather and Britt had invited them to be part of a group photo, and everyone had shown up.

"I remember standing on the sidewalk, watching the ambulance pull away.  It was such a good feeling, and I know we were all thinking that Cash is our baby, too," Tracy said. "He's Allegheny's baby."

"What happened is amazing," Heather said. "It's an amazing story."

"And an amazing baby," Britt said.