b.1951, single, midwife.
Pauline came to York from Jamaica when she was 21, to study nursing. English life inevitably presented phenomena to come to grips with: the food was bland, people ate puddings and cakes frequently rather than just on special occasions, and the climate was so unremittingly cold that a bedroom needed an electric fire to stay switched on at night. These initial shocks were absorbed in due course and the distance from home (the term Pauline still uses for Jamaica) had its advantages. Pauline's large family (5 siblings and 5 step-siblings) was riven by a dispute ever since her parents split up when she was 11, and Pauline often found herself in the difficult role of a buffer between the feuding sides. Sometimes it was just as well to be in a different country. The geographical distance, however, certainly had its sad sides. When one of her brothers got killed in a car accident, she was able to get on an airplane and say her farewell at the funeral; but when her grandmother died soon after, she had to stay at York, although grandmother was the one who had brought her up. On completing her nurse qualifications, Pauline went to Scotland to train as a midwife. Then she returned to York, to take up her career in the profession.
In York, Pauline had a veritable extended family to come back to, in the network of friends she had met through church during her nurse college years. She had become a Christian at age 7, thanks to a Brethren Church to which her grandmother had brought her, and in York she joined St Andrew's Church, having made friends also in St Cuthbert's. Through the Church Mission Society, she met a very special older couple, Charles and Dulcie McNeil, who "more or less adopted" her. Ever since she returned to York to take up her career as a midwife, much of Pauline's non-work life has been devoted to church activities: helping in creches and in youth clubs, and singing. The church has provided friends with whom she can have a chat, a moan, a cry and a laugh; "and the good thing is, wherever you are, God is there, and His promise never to leave you alone".
Pauline loves her work as a midwife. The number of births she has attended since she saw the first one as a student in 1974 is countless and she still sees each one as a miracle. But it is not all glamorous, there are problems and stresses too. Not all babies are welcomed by their mothers as a miracle; occasionally there are births that do get complicated and go wrong; and there are days at work when understaffing can sap job satisfaction, even when the mothers and babies come through well. Then there is the report-writing that has to be done after every untoward incident and in response to even the most trivial complaint; and the permanent sense of someone looking over one's shoulder, with which all staff have to live in our increasingly litigious society. Health-service reforms have taken their toll too. In the late 1980s, everyone had to undergo a reselection process to keep their jobs, in the course of which they were pressured to promise an implementation of measures for which they knew they lacked staff. For a time to come, Pauline found it hard to forgive the managers involved, which meant that the problem loomed large also in her Christian life. But despite all its difficulties, Pauline has remained in the profession she loves.
The early 1990s were an eventful time not only at work. St Andrew's Church had been a home from home to Pauline for years, and it was now coming through fundamental deliberations that ended in a part of its congregation leaving to found the York Community Church. It was not an easy decision, but Pauline in the end joined this group. She has been as busy at YCC as she used to be in St Andrew's and, happily, has no regrets.
Other than work and church, Pauline's pursuits include netball, gardening and cooking. She likes to have visitors in her house, and she has travelled to America several times, where most of her relatives and childhood friends live.
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