Two books, two adoption stories

Today our book club will be discussing "In a heartbeat," the story of the Tuohy family and their adoption of Michael Oher, a black teen-ager. The very successful movie, "The blind side," told the story of how they came to meet Michael and fold him into their loving family, assisting him to become a high school and college graduate and a successful NFL player.

It is an inspiring story--although I disagree with some of the basic points--like "how little it takes to help fill the desperate wants" of the poor and unfortunate, or the subtext that Michael would not have succeeded in life without them and the boost they provided.

At the same time I was reading "Prairie Tale" by Melissa Gilbert, of Little House TV fame. She was adopted when less than a day old and grew up in a family of glitz, glitter and glam, passionately loved, treasured by parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, managers, co-stars, and given every opportunity our culture could bestow on a child. She was no Laura Ingalls Wilder! At a very young age she had multiple "families" from the various TV and movie crews in which she lived an alternate fantasy. Unlike Michael Oher, she became extremely promiscuous, an alcoholic, obsessing about her origins, resentful of her parents and fame, and a woman without any moral compass or spiritual/religious guidelines. Even after multiple affairs, body and facial surgery to look more glamorous, and a life of fame and enormous wealth, she needed a therapist to help her feel "whole," and considering that this year she is getting a divorce from her second husband whom she acknowledges as the love of her life in the book, she's still on a journey.