Melissa Gilbert’s complicated ‘Prairie’ life

II.

For my first couple of decades, there was fairy dust sprinkled over everything in my life courtesy of my mother. According to her, and via her, through the press, everything was sparkly, beautiful, and perfect. Everyone was well behaved. We didn’t have any problems.    We never had colds.

In reality, things were quite different … and not okay. One of the first times I recall opening my eyes to this was when Rob Lowe and I were planning our wedding. Our plans were becoming ridiculously overblown and we were even talking about renting a sound stage. Oh, then there were the doves. Doves? Oy! It was a whole production.

One day my mother and I were in the car, going to meet the wedding planner and the florist. I was anxious about everything from the wedding details to the commitment I was about to make to Rob. I was a kid living a big life and growing up fast. Those years I spent in the “Brat Pack” (I really hate that stupid name) running with Rob, Emilio, and Tom, that was my equivalent to college. I didn’t have the confidence of a bride-to-be. Nervous and near tears, I was a babbling river of anxiety and fear.

“I’m so scared about this,” I told my mom. “I don’t know, I don’t know. Am I doing the right thing? Am I making a huge mistake? Can this work?”

My mother gave me a look full of calm and wisdom. “Sweetheart, don’t worry,” she said with total sincerity and earnestness. “Rob will make a wonderful first husband.”

I heard that and something inside me clicked. It was my first allergic reaction to my mother’s fairy dust. I thought, That is a really tweaked way of looking at life, and I knew something was not right. And such were our issues, my issues.

***

Like so many women I’ve met, my issues eventually caught up with me. I got to a point in life, somewhere into my second marriage and during my effort to get sober, where reality tapped me on the shoulder, demanding attention, asking questions I’d never stopped to consider: Who are you? How’d you get here? What does it mean to be a wife, a mother, a woman? What will make you happy? What does a peaceful life look like to you?

Sometimes life is like an uninvited houseguest. It shows up and refuses to leave until you deal with it. Call me a late bloomer, but  I didn’t feel eighteen until I was in my twenties, and I didn’t start putting my life together until much, much later.

Furthermore, I still get letters from women whose lives were and often still are truly horrible, victims of physical and sexual abuse. These women  say the one escape they had growing up was Little House on the Prairie. They wished they had Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life the way I played her. What I don’t ever tell them is that I’m also among those who wish I had Laura’s life the way I played her.

For me, work was a fantasy where I was a happy-go-lucky kid with a larger-than-life surrogate father in Michael Landon. There were people I could talk to and count on, and horses and cows and other animals I could play with in an idyllic outdoor setting. In real life, I struggled with the mythology of my existence — the story of my birth grew from the fairy dust my mother sprinkled on the truth, whatever that was.

I always knew I was adopted. I was told that I was the child of a prima ballerina and a Rhodes Scholar; my mother was a beautiful dancer who wasn’t able to give up her career, not just yet, and my father was in the middle of some project, and though I was the product of a loving relationship between two brilliant individuals, the timing was simply off,  so they gave me up for adoption, this wonder-child endowed with the gifts of both Margot Fontaine and Steven Hawking. My mother recognized in me the potential to not just be good but the most exceptional, and, well, that story was perpetuated over the years, told and retold like some sort of fairytale or legend, and so on.

Video   Melissa Gilbert answers your questions June 9: Actress and author Melissa Gilbert answers viewers’ questions about her years on the TV show “Little House on the Prairie” and her new book, “Prairie Tale.” Today show

Finally, I reached the age where I was able to fact check the story and found out my mother the dancer was in fact a dancer. What kind of dancer was never clear. She wasn’t a prima ballerina, though. That much I figured out. And my father the Rhodes Scholar was a sign painter and stock car racer. They were both married to other people. They each had three children. They ran off together, got pregnant, moved in together with six children, and decided they couldn’t afford a seventh.

So they gave me up for adoption, a child who would eventually end up wondering who I really am, who I’m related to, if I have a predisposition for high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, any history of cancer or personality issues.  f that’s asking too much, I’m willing to settle for finding out who gave me the nose I disposed of at eighteen.

III.

The latest twist in the story of my birth was brought to light a few days after my stepfather died. Close family and friends were at my mother’s, and my godmother, Mitzi, started in about the day my parents picked me up at the hospital. She was hilarious as she described my parents and their first day with a newborn. Out of the blue my mother said, “Well, imagine what a shock it was for me!”

Everyone turned toward my mother, including me. She wasn’t joking. She looked as if she were reliving that shock.

“I mean, we had no plans to adopt a child,” she said.

As I had many times throughout my adult life, I cocked my head and flashed a quizzical look at my mother. What?

“We weren’t even looking,” she continued. “Then I got a phone call that there was a baby available and did I want it?” She turned to me. “I called your dad.  He was on the road and he said, ‘Yes, that’s the one. Go get it.’”

“It?” I said. “You keep referring to me as an it.”

“Well, actually, you weren’t even born yet.” 

This was news to me. And I would have explored it further except new people arrived at my mother’s and she switched into hostess mode. 

A few days later my mother came over to my house and we talked about my step-dad’s death. I walked her through it because she didn’t remember much; by contrast, I remembered everything in detail. I had brought in a superb hospice team and used my training to turn into a patient advocate, which allowed my mother and the love of her life to have a peaceful goodbye.

I told her who had come to visit those final days, and then I described how she had spent Warren’s last day alive laying in bed next to him, sharing her strength and comforting him through his final moments. I told her what I saw as I watched him take his final breaths wrapped in her arms. I thanked her for letting me be a part of something so private, so spiritual, and so profoundly moving.

After a good cry, I reminded her of the story she and Mitzi had started to tell about my arrival in this world. I still wanted clarification. Tired and vulnerable, she opened up and said that she and my father had been trying to have a baby and were actually going through fertility treatments when she got the call. The strange part was, until then, they had not spoken about adoption — or so she said.

A few weeks later I was replaying that conversation and realized something.  My father had a daughter from a previous marriage. I’d met her once. And my mother was pregnant twice after me, once with a baby she lost at six months and once with my sister Sara. Both of my parents were fertile. So why couldn’t they — Obviously more was going on than I knew. Once again, the beginning of my life was defined by a question mark.

Excerpted from “Prairie Tale” by Melissa Gilbert. Copyright (c) 2009, reprinted with permission from Simon & Schuster.

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