A single light sparkled in the white snow, 200 miles west of Anchorage beyond the Alaska Range, 300 miles east of the Bering Sea coast. The light escaped from an underground cabin, with only the roof above ground level. From the cabin, the closest settlement lay 60 miles northeast across the tundra, across the Door Mountains, across several creeks. Down-river, Sleetmute could be reached by taking the shallow, windy Hoholitna River to the dark and placid Holitna, and that to the powerful Kuskokwim, 90 miles downstream.

On Christmas night in the 10-by-10 foot cabin our family celebrated. Jenny sat quietly, her five presents on the table in front of her. With our dog curled beside me, I sat on the foot of the bed Jenny faced. As the lantern hissed, my husband read.

I watched Jenny. Behind her, light bounced off the white snow crystals piled high to the ridge outside, then back through the clear sheet plastic gables, flooding the room with its brilliance.

This was the second winter in our snug cabin, warm even at 40 below. Days with trails to clear, I'd return weary and fall back on the bed. Jenny would hop down from her bed, unlace my winter boots, slide on my slippers and hand me coffee. Heaven couldn't beat that.

After chores, I'd sip coffee, seeing the dirt crumbling from the walls mixing with the mud floor; the organic smell of wet dirt mixing with other smells - bottled animal musks for luring animals to our traps, unwashed down coats and sleeping bags, wood smoke, boiled beaver or moose and barley stew, pungent black and green mildews growing on the roof purlins.

In the center, tacked to poles, lay three rough-sawn spruce boards. There, I'd stand to fix dinner, and it's where we'd stand to bathe or wash clothes in the small washtub, to skin the animals we caught, kneel to stoke the oil drum stove. Over our beds, cardboard held back dirt and moss chinking, added insulation and provided a wall for Jenny's art and school projects calendar.

I'd see and smell these things, and get an uneasy feeling thinking if a social worker came, they might try to take Jenny away saying ours was an unfit environment, not a home, saying she was neglected. It scared me to wonder if it was possible for them to take Jenny away from me because of how we lived.

Jenny sat quietly deciding which present to open first. Her taut little form perched on her stuff sack, the small of her back arched forward, her 5-year-old legs fit snugly under the table. There, she ate and did school work spending hours forming perfect letters, practicing adding and guiding herself through workbooks.

Most of all, she liked to read. In our one-room cabin, sitting at her table, Jenny was in her own, private domain.

At least this Christmas we had food and were together. Last year we'd been three weeks without food, waiting for the plane that didn't come till two days before Christmas. We'd reboiled coffee grounds for a month and had to catch a beaver every other day to feed the three of us and our dog. Some days we didn't catch one. By the time the plane arrived to take us to our supply cabin, Jenny and I felt reluctant to leave my husband and our dog alone on Christmas, not knowing when we'd get a flight back, but we needed food. Jenny and I had feasted on Spam and green beans on Christmas Day, although she'd suggested we wait until we got back home.

Jenny had actually gotten heavier then, perky as ever. She'd bounce ahead of me on the trap line and while we walked, Jenny would jabber. Listening to my own thoughts, I heard her now and then, soothed by her happy chirping that voiced her world. Her pack hugged her back, and Brownie, her only "toy," hung his stuffed puppy head out, ears bouncing as she walked, swaying when she snowshoed in fresh snow.

As we walked, we'd chant the days of the week, count by fives, or spell new words. I carried two pieces of hard candy in case she got tired on the six-mile trap line. At the far end, she'd get one piece, the other when we got home. Some days, even the sweets didn't offset how tired she was, and I'd try to think of ways to distract her, wondering how often I pushed her too hard.

Like the time we'd gone out Door Creek to set a new line. Absorbed, I went to work making sets. Along by, Jenny said she was cold. I said, "Walk around to stay warm and I'll be done soon."

Twenty minutes later she began crying, and I turned my attention to her. A hard-headed 5-year-old, insistent she could dress herself, I had allowed her that. I looked inside her coat - nothing but a long-john shirt. I wore a thermal and a flannel shirt, and a down vest under my coat.

Inside Jenny's boots were bare feet. I quickly gave her my socks, vest and coat, and we hurried the two miles home. Hypothermic, then sick for four days, she laid in bed 50 trail-less miles from a radio as I wondered if a social worker would be a better judge than I; was I an unfit mother? How could I learn to be a good mother with no model? Should Jenny be taken from me?

This year we were together, and the game warden, Larry, had brought us a turkey and oranges. Three of Jenny's packages were an introductory book offer I'd gotten. The other two, the brightly wrapped ones, were from Larry's wife, Pat.

Jenny set the shiny presents from Pat aside to open last. Carefully, she unfolded one wrapping after another, savoring each gift as it appeared. She peeled away the paper, read each book cover to cover, then stacked them neatly aside. She ran her hand over Pat's first present when its wrappings were laid aside. The glossy cover held pages and pages of detailed fairy tale pictures to color. Jenny looked through it, then laid it aside also.

As I watched her, I thought of my childhood Christmases in Florida and the intense aloneness I'd felt, even sitting with my brother and sister among three-foot-tall mounds of boxes and wrappings. Frenzied, we'd unwrap the heaps sinking inside when we were done, wondering why there was still that painful hollow feeling. Was there anything more?

The presents never did make up for not feeling free to talk about what was happening in our lives, about the drinking, about the anger. Our parents really loved us. They'd done the best they could.

Jenny sat up straight, opening her final present. I watched as the paper unfolded. When the gift was revealed, her back rounded down in a slump. She held the plastic package of 30 felt-tip coloring pens in both hands, folded open on her table in front of her. She looked without making a sound.

I watched her silently, knowing this was the final present. Grief for her world without kids, with no sister or brother, without oranges and green grapes, without mounds of Christmas presents and so many things that most people take for granted welled inside me. Mostly, for her world without kids.

The best that I could do for her was not good enough, not nearly, and would not be, ever. "What is it, honey?" I asked. "What are you thinking?"

Jenny held the package in her hands and turned to look at me. Holding the markers up for me to see, she said, "Mom, I must be the luckiest kid in the whole world ... I have all these colors to choose from."

Linda Marie Davis first visited Homer in 1973 when she arrived in Alaska from Florida. She moved to Homer after she and her daughter, Jenny, both finished college in the same year, 1997.