My Father Wanted Pauline by Abigail Wyatt (All About My Name Poetry Series)

I am delighted to be represented in the All About My Name Poetry Series currently being run by Silver Birch Press. Especially pleased, too, that this is a poem that enables me to post a picture of my grandmother, Matilda Jane. She was quite a woman. 🙂

Silver Birch Press

My Father Wanted Pauline
by Abigail Wyatt

I was a mid-summer baby,
not a Yankee Doodle Dandy
but born on the Fourth of July.
I arrived, they said, not quite on cue
but two warm days too late.
I made my entrance while still unnamed
(my father wanted Pauline)
but Paulines wear cardigans
hand-knitted in pale pastels
and fastened by dainty pearl buttons.
They must have taken one quick peek
and right away known
that wasn’t me.

Matilda Jane Ottley was fifty-four,
my father’s formidable mother.
Never a beauty, already grown stout,
her birthday fell two days before.
I should have been christened for her, so she thought;
in her mind there was no issue, no question;
I should have been Matilda Jane;
or Matilda, or Jane, at least.

It was not to be: the die was cast
their battle lines were drawn;
my mother dug her heels in deep

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