(no subject)

[gosling]

My maternal grandfather was born in February of 1878, (yes, that year is correct) two months premature, in a drafty old farmhouse in Danvers. Family legend has it that they wrapped him in layers of uncarded cotton and stuck him in a wooden box in the very back of the top of the wood stove, in a makeshift incubator of sorts. Clearly he survived just fine. From the perspective of my perhaps drafty, but heated, house and my abundant hot water and layers of polarfleece, I can't even imagine it.