Not a simple change, such as rearranging furniture or suddenly deciding to go to a different restaurant. No. Not at all. The abrupt change was at the very core of my being, a momentary change that alters lives forever.
She entered the living room from a hallway, smiling, kind of curious like a girl can be. I am not sure if she was sizing up the new visitor to her home or whether she was not particularly interested. But I was. This was 6-year-old Kristin, and, as unexplainable as it may be, I knew looking at her the first time that this was my daughter. She was to change my life, and, unbeknown to her at that time, I was to change hers.
Do not expect a rational explanation. There is none. Maybe that is the way it is with many important events.
Kristin lived in a nice house off Memorial Drive in Houston, on a street called by the sweet name of Butterfly Lane. It was a nice area of town. Judy, Kristin’s mother, and I had been on a few dates. Judy lived with her friends, Barbara and Marylin. Barbara also had a daughter, Caren, from an earlier marriage who was the same age as Kristin. Kristin and Caren had a sister-like relationship.
Judy was married to her high school sweetheart when she got pregnant. Her husband subsequently had an affair with someone at his work, and got her pregnant. Let us call this part of the movie, “Dick’s choice” but, then again, maybe Judy did not give him one. I do not know what he was thinking or what transpired between him and Judy, but Judy and Dick divorced. Dick married the other woman.
A single mom with a baby is a prescription for poverty, but Judy survived and thrived. Years later, Judy and Barbara – also a single mom – were smart. They pooled resources to live in a four-bedroom house in an upscale part of Houston off Memorial Drive, later to take in Marylin. Their joint efforts ensured a safe neighborhood and a good school for their children.
My sense was that Kristin was a happy child, surrounded by people she loved who gave her security. But she did not have a father. The way I viewed things, it does not matter how happy one is, a girl with no father has an empty portion of her soul. I knew that I was to fill that hole, at least as best I could. But self-importance was not the issue. The issue was that I knew immediately that this was my daughter.
To this point, I had not wanted children. I married my high school sweetheart at age 19, and the marriage lasted for 10 years. I had no desire for children, and we had none.
I was single in Houston at the time I met Judy. I was a professor at the University of Houston enjoying the big city life. I had more money than I knew what to do with. I never balanced my checkbook. Why would I? I could not run out of money. I did not spend extravagantly. However, I ate at fine restaurants in the evening and kept new music flowing in. I was not responsible for anyone else.
It is a small world. My friend, Doug Sharp, whom I had met at Texas A&M and with whom I had written some songs, brought Judy to my apartment to meet me. Doug and Judy went to school together in Grand Prairie, TX, he being a grade ahead. Judy was with a guy who was a mutual friend of theirs from Grand Prairie who was visiting in Houston, and Doug was with his future wife, Marylin. I was supposed to have a date, but it fell through. In my bathroom I had long rectangular mirror hanging on the wall which had an ICART drawing on it – a cigarette in an ashtray with the smoke rising and evolving into an enticing lady. When Judy went to the bathroom, she came back out she said, “I see you have a picture of me in the bathroom.” I am the least knowledgeable of women’s ways, but I did interpret that as a good sign.
A few months later we were married, with Kristin in attendance as a helper, and a couple of months after that, I formally adopted Kristin. Shortly thereafter we received a new birth certificate for Kristin that had my name on it as the father.
Kristin and I became close. We did a lot together. She sometimes enjoyed, and sometimes not, the antics of a man transitioning into fatherhood for a then 7-year-old girl.
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