Like a tree he’ll grow,
With his head held high,
And his feet planted firm on the ground,
And you won’t see no-
Body dare to try
To boss him or toss him around

He cringed at the words.

His mother can teach him
The way to behave,
But she won’t make a sissy out o’ him—
Not him!
Not my boy!
Not Bill...

How many times had he listened to the song from the movie, hoping against hope they would become his reality. Even as the song wafted from the screen through the room, the boy was already in tears. His mother and sister had pleaded with his father over the decision.

“The courts decided it was our right… Freedom of Speech!” his father had argued. As if the right to self was negotiable.

“Our right?” The boy remembered those words and trembled. The promise the song offered in the midst of the bittersweet story fled, since his father was no well-meaning if desperate man like the singer in the movie, but instead was well-intended but entirely mistaken through arrogance.

I can give him
Lots o’ pointers, very sound,
On the way to get round
Any girl.
I can tell him—

[spoken]
Wait a minute!
Could it be?
What the hell!
What if he is a girl?

Unlike the yet-to-be-born child in the song, the boy had tried to tell his… her father who she was. The question by the man on the screen was instead twisted from cautious wonder to his father's abject fear.

“What the hell!!! He just told me he’s a girl!" She remembered. All the hope the song promised was ripped away as the girl was consigned to be ignored or worse. She trembled even as the noise outside her bedroom grew louder.

“Don’t worry, Bill. All the elders are behind you,” she heard. She reflexively rubbed her coarse, shortened hair, fearing what could be worse than what they had already done. The only consolation, if there could be one, was that she “matched” her sister’s chemo-driven hairline.

My little girl,
Pink and white
As peaches and cream is she.
My little girl
Is half again as bright
As girls are meant to be!

The words were more than taunts, but rather, never-to-be-realized hopes. Once again, she had cried all through the movie, shaking her head at the irony as she remembered the words of the other song.

“You’ll never walk alone.” She bowed her head and wept as the loud voices grew still and only sound she heard besides her now-quiet sobs was the click of her bedroom door....

Soliloquy
from the stage musical andmotion picture
Carousel
Words and Music by
Oscar Hammerstein II and
Richard Rodgers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-6UH4nxCg
John Wilson Orchestra
Solo by Julian Overden

You'll Never Walk Alone
Solo by Josh Groban
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WalpBk4KW4
(my late sister Joann's favorite song)