8degreesoflatitude

Isabel helped to bring you into the world Theo. She was my midwife. When she wasn’t delivering babies, she’d be delivering lambs or calves on her own farm. She was a large, strong, Yorkshire woman, down to earth and practical. I reckoned that if she could pull a calf out, she wouldn’t have a problem with us.

On New Years Eve afternoon it started to snow. I was in the girls bedroom changing their bed sheets when I looked out the window and noticed large goose down snowflakes starting to fall. Your dad and I had been invited to a party that evening but the snow didn’t let up. By early evening it had become a blizzard and strong winds felled the electricity lines. We lit candles and cooked soup on the wood stove.

January 1996 seemed like a very long month to me. Your dad struggled to get to…