My Father's Persistence Poem by Edwina Reizer

Was there rain coming down that day?
I really can't remember.
My mother says it was cold and dreary
on that day in December.
Was I welcomed onto this earth
as I took my first breath in?
My father wanted a boy to raise.
Should I have stayed where I had been?

Gradually he accepted a little girl
and held me on his knee.
He played LP records for hours
and I inhaled the harmony.
My mother says he was obsessed with this
and thought I should be left alone.
But his persistence through my first two years
paid off with each new tone.

By age four I was playing the piano
and my father praised God.
My mother was surprised I guess.
But she thought me rather odd.
My happiest childhood memories
was playing whatever I'd heard.
My father was deliriously happy.
My mother thought it absurd.

Most of my youth went so fast.
Most of it I can't remember,
just like the part about rain coming down
on that cold dreary day in December.
But the thing I remember the most now
was my father's pride and joy
that I was born a girl instead of a baby boy.