Far from troubles and scrutiny, Dylan, Satchel, and Tarn chased woolly lambs across the hillsides, and in the village they happily blended with the local kids. The previous year, in the midst of all the turbulence, Dylan had chosen another name for herself, a lovely one, and she had asked us not to call her Dylan again. We respected her wishes. Now Satchel, because he had been teased in the school yard as a "book bag," and perhaps inspired by Dylan's name change, chose a fine new name for himself.
Our time in Ireland was only momentarily marred by news that Woody Allen had appealed the custody decision; and then again in midsummer, when he came to Dublin, shattering our newfound peace and privacy with more headlines and loud accusations. In the newspapers we read that he had brought Soon-Yi with him. No one in the family had heard from her since 1992.
As sure as death, Soon-Yi was gone from our lives. Long months ago, her brothers and sisters had begun the painful process of hardening their hearts toward her. Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, schoolgirl, sister, daughter, had metamorphosed into something none of us could comprehend or think about. Knowing my sorrow, a friend urged me to think of her not as a daughter but as a child who had lived among us, without ever understanding what a family is, or what a mother is; she was unable to love us, and felt no commitment to us. She was not a daughter the way Lark, Daisy, Tam, and Dylan are; I tried to think this, to make the betrayal less terrible, the loss more bearable. But in the end, whatever her feelings, or lack of them, I can only love her as my child, and there is nothing to be done about that. I no longer want to see her, but for the rest of my life I will miss her.
We returned to New York in the fall of 1993, still not knowing whether Woody Allen would face criminal prose-
cution for his conduct with Dylan; the police investigation had gone on for a year. My own position in this matter had never shifted: my responsibility was to secure the necessary protection for Dylan. I had always hoped this could be achieved without putting her through a trial. Now, with the supreme court decision, I felt confident that, at least for the immediate future, she would be safe.
On September 24, 1993, Connecticut state's attorney Frank Maco announced his decision. "I have reviewed an arrest warrant application submitted by the state police," he said. "As to the allegations ... I find that probable cause exists." Despite this finding, he would not initiate prosecution because of "the risk of exposing the child complainant to the rigors, uncertainties, and possible traumatization of such actions ... I cannot identify a compelling community interest or expectation that justifies my risking the well-being of the child-victim by exposure to the criminal process ... I have conferred with the child and her mother and they concur with my decision."
In order to undo Woody's adoptions of Dylan and Moses, we needed to prove that, unbeknownst to the court, a relationship between Woody and Soon-Yi had already existed prior to the adoptions, a fact both had freely admitted at first, but that they now denied under oath. Long before the proceedings began, a housekeeper Woody and I shared told me she had seen Soon-Yi in his apartment and changed the sheets and emptied the wastebaskets after her visits.
To the same Judge Roth who had approved the adoptions, we brought proof of fraud including hundreds of calls between Woody and Soon-Yi, as well as witnesses who saw Soon-Yi entering and leaving his apartment alone and other witnesses who saw them in Woody's apartment throughout 1990 and 1991. There was even the photographer who had taken a widely published photograph of
Woody and Soon-Yi holding hands at a Knicks game in 1990.
After hearing all that, Judge Rene Roth sidestepped the issue of fraud and requested an additional hearing on the "best interest of the children." But I had already spent a half million dollars on the fraud hearing. Faced with a choice between higher education for my children and continuing this litigation, I let it go, at least for the time being. Moses, almost of age, was no longer an issue, and Dylan was protected by the state supreme court.
Woody lost his appeals, the photographers receded, and we found ourselves surrounded by good friends. But as we went about the city, walking, or waiting for buses or cabs, it was hard to ignore the possibility that Woody or Soon-Yi or the limo with the tinted windows might cross our paths. When the older kids settled in to watch a Knicks game on television and the camera suddenly cut to Woody and Soon-Yi, Moses got up and silently left: the room. Minutes later the others switched off the set. Even the view I had loved from our apartment windows for thirty years had become painful. I had to break a twelve-year habit of glancing to see which lights were on in the penthouse across the park.
Over the Christmas holidays Fletcher got a job in the packing room at a chic Manhattan clothing store. One day his supervisor, not realizing he was Soon-Yi's brother, asked him to carry packages out to the waiting limo of Woody Allen's girlfriend. Fletcher declined.
That winter the rent-control laws were changed, and our rent was about to be quadrupled. So we let go of the apartment that had been my family's since I was a teenager, to live full-time at Frog Hollow, where, after all, we were happiest. The older kids were in college, graduate school, or law school, and they came home only on weekends or the holidays. Moses, at sixteen, still had two years of high
school ahead, so for him it would be more difficult, but he was willing to make the transition to a Connecticut school. As a family we were certain that life in the country would be easier, healthier, and more fun for the younger kids. Although Woody took us to court to prevent us from moving, the judge said we could go. I have lost count of how many times Woody has brought me back into court to challenge the custody decision or to dispute its visitation restrictions. But as of this writing we are still safe, and the children are happier than they have ever been.
So while carpenters fixed up Frog Hollow, during the winter of 1994 we went to Florida, where we rode dolphins, and I made Miami Rhapsody with Sarah Jessica Parker and Antonio Banderas.
I wrote to my childhood friend Maria Roach: "This is a time for healing; time to acknowledge the strengths that have seen us through and to be grateful for our blessings. So much has been lost; people I loved dearly and my belief in them, daily life as we knew it and our privacy and peace. We reached a point where we no longer knew what was probable. We did not bring these troubles upon ourselves, but through them I determined to define myself to myself, to others, and to God. This was the goal I set, and so each laceration became a test, a trial I needed to be worthy of. Each scalding survived was a purification. Each plunge into darkness left me struggling for light. Every separate fear and personal humiliation endured served to strip away what was nonessential in me and made me understand: it is by that which cannot be taken away that we can measure ourselves.
"During these last months, my entire orientation has shifi:ed: emotional pain, suffering of the soul, and all the falling away seem to have led me into a deeper consciousness, an awareness, toward a state of (^i{ I may use this word) transcendence, through which we experience our own
existence as a part of the greater whole; as both a non-self and as a far-greater self, not defined by transitory landmarks or finite boundaries, but existing purely in relation to an infinite whole. Through this awareness, and the falling of the walls, and the evolution of self comes meaningful direction, strength, and serenity. It is also the ultimate weapon against nothingness.
"I am bonding myself to these thoughts, drawing courage fi-om them, and, carrying only what is essential, I will travel lightly into an unknown future, trusting we will all be safe and that a meaningful new life will create itself."
In February the phone in our New York apartment rang: an agency was telling me about a little girl for whom they had been unable to find a home, and whom they thought would be right for us. The kids and I talked it over, and in March we welcomed an exquisite one-month-old baby girl into the family. Already smiling and cooing, Kaeli-Shea was a "Gerber's baby," except that, for reasons no one could explain, she was unable to move her arms.
In May, Woody lost his first appeal of the state supreme court decision. The court recognized Woody's "tendency to place inappropriate emphasis on his own wants and needs and to minimize and even ignore those of his children." While the five judges stated that the allegations of sexual abuse of Dylan were inconclusive, they also stated that the testimony at the trial suggested that abuse did occur.
In June we packed up thirty years* worth of Farrow family stuff, and we left: the apartment on Central Park West, When we arrived at Frog Hollow everyone cheered, and we moved our things into the newly renovated eight-bedroom house.
Now, Kaeli-Shea slept in the bassinet beside my bed. She received physical therapy, and I worked in my garden and learned my lines, along with some sign language, for a
movie to be shot that winter m Connecticut. Reckless, written by Craig Lucas, offered me one of the best roles of my career. Its director, Norman Rene, my new friend, made a remarkable film and then died not long after it was finished.
Even before we lefi: New York, soon after Kaeli-Shea's arrival, another adoptive parent called to tell me about a boy in an Indian orphanage. He had been abandoned some years earlier in a Calcutta train station. His age was put at five, six, or seven. He was paraplegic as a result of polio. This very frail child was in urgent need of a home, but in all the years that he had been in the orphanage, no one had come forward for him. I told the children about the little boy in India, and there evolved an extraordinary discussion in which the children suggested ways they could each be of help. Everyone wanted this little brother. They urged me to call the agency and hurry the paperwork along, and could we please have a picture. Then, together, we went out and bought a little red wheelchair.
During that first winter at Frog Hollow, Isaiah started to talk, and little by little, Kaeli-Shea began to use her arms. Tam, while receiving braille lessons and "cane mobility" instruction, was fully integrated at the local school. That winter she read The Diary of Anne Frank in braille. All the kids made friends quickly, and after the restrictions of apartment living, it was wonderful for them to be able to run outside and play, and invite other children over whenever they wanted.
I was just finishing Reckless when Thaddeus arrived from India; they gave me the afternoon off so that the kids and I could meet the plane at JFK. My seventh son was so weak from malnutrition that he spent much of those first months lying down. His legs were like chicken bones and the whites of his large eyes were a dull yellow. His knees, the tops of his feet, and his backside are still scarred from years of dragging himself along the ground.
But we attached ramps to Frog Hollow, and before long Thaddeus, with a dazzling smile, was scooting up and down in his bright red wheelchair. Doctors in the United States don't see much polio these days, so at first they weren't sure how to proceed. Neither leg could support his weight, and one was rigidly bent at the knee, almost at a right angle. There was talk about surgery, and encasing him in a complete body and neck brace because the severe curvature of his spine was causing his ribs to collapse on his organs. But he was just beginning to get used to us and everything else here. He couldn't speak or understand a word of English. We decided to try physical therapy first— maybe we could straighten his leg without surgery. Then he would be able to wear leg braces, and with them he might one day walk with crutches, and there was a chance that his abdominal and back muscles would grow strong enough to support his spine.
Thaddeus won real respect as he endured months of often painful therapy three times a day with plucky good humor and stubborn optimism. It was easy for me to learn how to do the exercises he needed from the therapist who came to our house several times a week, because they were similar to the exercises that had been used for Moses's leg, which he still has to do. We stretched the tendons behind Thaddeus's knee, trying to unlock it; I held his legs while he did his best to walk on his hands wheelbarrow-style. This wasn't easy because he was so weak, and because his left arm has only half strength.
One year after his arrival, braced from his waist through his shoes, Thaddeus pulled himself upright while clinging to a walker, his dark eyes sparkling in triumph. Today, two years later, with the braces and crutches, he can tear around the garden at a good clip, over rocks and through bushes. Although the wheelchair will always be his primary means of getting about, his upper-body muscles are strong, and his
spine has straightened. He speaks English now, with a lovely Indian lilt, and he has lots of friends in the second grade at our village school. In the evening I often find him sharing his new reading skills with his little brother Isaiah. Since Thaddeus's arrival his weight has tripled, and he has enough energy to light up the state of Connecticut.
During the time we were waiting for Thaddeus, another agency called to tell me about Minh, a blind girl about three years old, who had spent all her life m a Vietnamese orphanage. No, I kept saying, "We're waiting for a child from India, and that will be it for us. I hope you find another family for Minh." But once you are aware of a specific child, it's difficult to ignore his or her destiny. Photos arrived in the mail showing a tiny pixie of a girl standing against a wall with her fist in her eye.
More than a year had gone by, during which Thaddeus had arrived and become a joy to aU of us, when the agency called to say they still had not located a family for Minh. We said yes. The kids were thrilled: Dylan even begged me to ask the agency for a second little girl who would be exactly her age. But I told her that Minh would be the last of the brothers and sisters.
The journey to an orphanage to claim a daughter or son is every bit as extraordinary an experience as giving birth. A year later, in late 1995, when the papers were finally completed, Dylan and I set out with our knapsacks full of presents from the children to their new sister, plus extra treats for the other kids at the orphanage—candy, crayons, baseball hats, and so forth. We flew to Vietnam, stopping in Los Angeles, Seoul, and Bangkok, where we spent the night at an airport hotel before continuing on to Ho Chi Mmh City, formerly Saigon.
That evening, as I picked at my dinner, Dylan raced around the rooftop restaurant with two children of a family
friend who lives in Vietnam. In bustling downtown Ho Chi Minh City, under a warm, star-filled sky, I thought of the rest of my children just waking in their beds on the other side of this earth, and I thought of little Minh, who by this time tomorrow would be with Dylan and me.
The next day we were taken to the orphanage, a car trip of roughly three hours. As Ho Chi Minh City's crowded suburbs fell away and we sped past the rice fields, I held one momentous thought: I was about to meet a child who is my daughter, and whom I will stand by for the rest of my life. Today she will not understand a word I say, nor will I know scarcely a word of hers, but I will take her in this car away from the orphanage, the only place she has ever known, and I will bring her to the other side of the earth, where her sisters and brothers are waiting in a Connecticut farmhouse. Minh is coming home, home to her family.
There is a brand-new doll and a brown Steiff teddy bear waiting on the spare bed that will be Minh's, in the large corner bedroom where Dylan and Tam sleep. From her windows Minh won't see the views of the lake, the field, and the woods beyond. But Tam has filled a shelf with books for blind children, Dylan has written a beautiful poem, and Satchel and Thaddeus have gone through their things and chosen the toys they feel their sister will like best. Isaiah has wrapped his favorite steam shovel in toilet paper and placed it under Minh's pillow. Lark and I have hung small dresses in the closet and the drawers are filled with size-five clothes—we don't know how big she is, but we guess she is very small. Tam has reminded me to stock up on Asian rice and nuk-mam, the Vietnamese fish sauce. Isaiah says, Better get hot dogs. Trang, an invaluable translator and friend during Tam's first months with us, is standing by. Lark, Daisy, Matthew, Sascha, and Carrie will be waiting at the house when we return, and of course Moses. Fletcher is at school in Germany. At the village school, the kindergarten teacher has already rearranged the
What I had been searching for, since the very beginning, since my childhood ended with polio, through my years in convent school and my time with Frank Sinatra and in India, and really every single day, was a life that would be meaningful. Now, in a car outside Ho Chi Minh City, I held Dylan's hand and silently prayed to be better than I am—to be the person Minh and each of my children needs and deserves—and to be worthy of the life I had chosen and the responsibilities that lay ahead.
At the orphanage I hugged my new daughter, and with her mouth overflowing with M&M's, tiny Minh announced that she would sleep next to me on the floor, and she hoped I would give her plenty of candy, a knapsack like my own, and an electric fan.
I named her Frankie-Minh, after Frank Sinatra. He had once told me he had met a little girl who was blind. Hair was blowing across her face, and when he bent over to move it out of her eyes, the child asked, "Mr. Sinatra, what color is the wind?"
And Frank said his own eyes filled so he couldn't see. "Sweetheart," he answered, "the wind moves so fast that none of us have ever seen it."
Frankie-Minh has now been with our family for more than a year. She is six years old, and a single sunbeam, a pure delight to everyone who meets her. In no time she became fluent in English, and already she is learning to read in braille. Tam is able to help her in so many ways, but really all of the kids help one another.
In 1996, after Matthew graduated cum laude from law
school, we returned, as we have every year, to Ireland—this time so I could make An^la Mooney Dies Again in Connemara, directed by Tommy McCartle and beautifully written by John McCartle. Matthew joined us in the west of Ireland, in the place where he had been conceived one blissful summer more than a quarter of a century before. To the delight of all the kids large and small, I have bought a thatched cottage in the Wicklow Mountains where the river bends.
What falls away : a memoir Page 29