Our Country Girl

On the occasion of my daughter’s wedding, I wrote a song titled “The Country’s in My Soul.” I performed it for the guests (there’s nothing like a captive audience!) in place of the customary speech by the father of the bride. The chorus goes, “Don’t you worry, Momma, I’m different that I know. But by and by as the years do fly the truth is gonna show. ‘Cause I’ll take the Grand Old Opry over any Broadway role. I was raised up in the city, but the country’s in my soul.”

Somehow, in her early twenties, Ali developed a love of pop-county music, a genre I can appreciate musically, but always disliked because it often glorifies what we now call the MAGA base and their culture. There were many ways our adopted daughter was different from us. The country music angle was a way of putting that idea across in a song, done in the bluegrass style, of course. Don’t let the song fool you. In many ways, all the important ways, she developed into a person who is in accord with the values we strove to imbue in her.

After nine years of a barren marriage, our world was rocked by the arrival of the four day old blonde haired, blue eyed beauty we had agreed to adopt just the day before. A previously arranged private adoption had fallen through, so the doctor asked us if we were interested. Having been working on adopting for a couple of years by then, we were more than ready.

No matter how ready you think you are, though, adoption feels like a step into the void. Who will this person whose genes are completely separate from yours turn out to be?

“We could tell right from the get-go she had a quiet way. And as time went by and the days did fly it blossomed more each day.”

Ali, named after the obstetrician, Albert, who secured her for us, clearly did not have our genes. (Though my mother liked to joke her granddaughter inherited her fair coloring from her.) Even when children have their parental DNA, it’s still a crap shoot, but it’s likely the child will have a good many of your traits. Ali turned out to be unlike us in a number of basic ways. We are outgoing and calm. She was reticent, shy and a bit on the excitable and anxious side.

“When the other kids would fuss and fight in the games that they would play, she’d stand aside, just let it ride, and this is what she’d say. Don’t you worry Momma…”

Yet, like my artist wife she was possessed of a rich imagination and a creative mind. Like me, she was full of questions on big philosophical issues. At four years of age, she piped up, “If God made everything, who made God?”

Nature had blessed her with perfect pitch and a lovely singing voice that we made sure was trained by the best teacher in our area. She had a flair for the dramatic that was honed over many years of drama school.

When she performed at her first grade piano recital, we fully expected this timid, skittish girl to fall apart. But once in the spotlight she nailed her piece with a confidence that astounded us. She was a born performer. Sometimes we wondered, if she were to have been raised in the blue collar culture of her biological mother, whether she would have been given the opportunity to develop these talents.

In keeping with our mixed marriage, Ali was provided with the cultural aspects of both Jewish and Christian tradition but none of the religious training or church attendance that most kids are indoctrinated in. We instructed her in the secular humanism we ourselves embraced, and she showed, early on, the ethical awareness that eventually culminated in her becoming the honest, caring, sincere person most parents hope their children to be.

While most of our friends’ kids were on the fast track to professional or business careers, our child was not attracted to money or status. She chose to major in what many in our social circle might think of as a worthless degree, theater. Like many who experience success in high school dramatics, she had dreams of going to Broadway, and like most, her move up to the college level made her aware her talent might not live up to those aspirations. To undertake the difficult life of trying to make it in show biz seemed to her like a poor choice. We concurred. She floundered a bit after graduation, but having had many years of summer camp experience as a camper and counsellor, she gravitated to early childhood education and found her passionate calling as an administrator and teacher at a unique pre-school. It is is based on a highly innovative philosophy of education commensurate with her own belief that early schooling should foster social skills, intellectual curiosity and creative thinking, rather than the three Rs.

The money isn’t great, but she wouldn’t trade careers for twice the pay.

“…she kissed herself her share of frogs and even hugged some toads, and just when we were thinking, a spinster she might be, her very own prince charming come a-sailing on the sea.”

Parents in our socio-economic group tend to hope their daughters marry a professional man who would provide the affluent lifestyle most Americans covet, but, of course, Ali would have none of that. She wound up falling in love with a Coast Guard enlisted man with a high school degree whose dyslexia had interfered with formal academic studies. He’d had a rural upbringing in America’s heartland, as far away from our experience as possible. I guess you could say he walked right out of a country song. But he was gifted in his ability to grasp technical knowledge and practical skills. Drawing on his Coast Guard training in electronics he went on to secure an excellent job at Reagan airport in charge of systems and controls. Most important, Will and Ali forged the kind of relationship, not unlike ours, that would be the envy of most married couples.

“Now she’s rollin’ down the road in her 4 by 4, sign on the window says ‘baby on board,’ wheels of the pickup kick up the Carolina clay, Leavin’ the city lights behind, down home music to ease her mind, Just like Momma said, where there’s a Will there’s a way.”

Will’s first billet after their marriage was in North Carolina, home of the country music she had grown to love. Now they live close by to us, but her car radio is still tuned to a country station.

They blessed us with a grandchild, who, like them, is a caring loving person, as well as an older granddaughter from Will’s first marriage who is married with two children. Thanks to our having taken the risk of adoption, we now have a family circle to warm our old age.

What more could any parents ask from their children, whether biologically theirs or adopted? In fact, almost from the day fate brought her into our lives, that distinction vanished from our awareness. Ali is as much a part of us as any child can be, and we are eternally grateful that fate carried her to our doorstep.