A cold February birthday

My daughter Rowan at eight months old. Happy Birthday, darling.

Brrr. I am sneezing and freeing in Grumpy Grange. I woke around 4am with a splitting headache, took a pill and wasn't quite warm enough to fall back into slumber, so I put the electric blanket on for a while, then got up and slung my dressing gown on top of the bed. Next time I opened my eyes, it was 9.05, when a series of sneezes propelled me up and about.

The temperature in my office is only just above 50F. I am wearing thermals with two layers
on top and just can't get warm. I can't concentrate on work - I have another book to edit. My fingers are too cold to type of the notes from last night's excellent Soc of Authors talk on getting forensic detail right in crime novels. And I'm still sneezing. If I avoid catching a cold, it'll be a miracle.

My dear daughter, who I have known for a whole four years now since NORCAP helped me find her, is 40 today. Unbelievable. I only feel 40 myself; well, perhaps 45. She says she feels 28. Hard to believe that 40 years ago, in weather just like this, snow on the ground, I gave birth to her after a dresdful 36 hour labour. She was born with the cord wrapped round her neck, and was a horrible blue-grey colour and I thought she was dead. I lay there with a dull, leaden feeling in my heart. I can remember thinking, as a despised 'unmarried mother', that if she were dead, it would be problem solved, I wouldn't have to make the ghastly decision about adoption. They rushed her off to give her oxygen and then pronounced her very much alive. For which I am now incredibly grateful!

I remember ringing my mother from the ward. "I've had the baby," I said. "It's a - " The phone was slammed down the other end. My mother didn't want to know. My father didn't know I'd even been pregnant. When he did find out, I got a severe tongue-lashing and was ordered to marry the first decent man who asked me and never let this kind of disgrace befall the family again.

What a huge difference 40 years has made. If I had given birth to her now, married or not, nobody would have turned a hair and I would have had no difficulty finding somewhere to live. I'd even have got state help. Only two years after having Rowan, as I christened her, councils started offering flats to single mothers. I had just missed out.

Both of us have had our difficult times, but the great thing is that we finally met, and bonded. Though nothing can make up for those lost years of child-rearing, the joys of cuddling and playing with my infant daughter, of opening her up creatively by introducing her to poetry and music and art, like my own mother did. But her adoptive mum - who incidentally was abandoned by her own husband and left to bring up two adoptive children on her own ("I ended up a single mum, too," she told me) - did a marvellous job, probably a better one than I could have done.
So now I have a gorgeous grown-up daughter called Rhiannon, but still a tiny blonde baby called Rowan forever nestles in my heart.

Rowan and I in the pub on the day we met for the very first time.