I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [49]
As I got to know the Tuohys, they invited me to come to their house after school, an invitation I ended up accepting pretty quickly. They lived just a couple of blocks from the old campus, so I already was familiar with the area, even though high school classes had moved to the new campus south of the city. Coach Tuohy would drive me over to their house after basketball practice sometimes, and I would stay for dinner (which was whatever they ordered in, since no one in the family liked to cook). Then he would drive me back to wherever I was sleeping at the time, usually stopping at a fast-food place somewhere along the way to order me something to tide me over until breakfast.
One evening after a track meet, when I didn't give Sean a clear answer as to where I would be staying that night, they invited me to stay the night on the sofa in the game room. And so the Tuohy family became part of my rotation. I would stay with them for a couple of nights, always trying to be sure I was a good guest by making a very neat bed with the sheets and blankets they offered, and folding them up neatly on the corner of the sofa in the morning.
The more time I spent with that family, the more I felt like I had found a home. It might have been a little bit of a crazy home with people who seemed always to be running in and out, between Collins's friends stopping by all the time and Sean and Leigh Anne's work schedules, but it was a comfortable kind of crazy.
To be a part of a community at Briarcrest, as well as starting to feel like part of a supportive family, made all the difference in the world for me, because I'd never been around people who were cheering me on. One of the most important things going on for me at that time was building relationships, because that was something that had been lacking in my life. Of course I had my biological family and I loved them fiercely, but as I mentioned, love was something we never discussed much in my family. We never, ever said those words to one another. And yes, while everyone around us, from social workers to foster families, could see that we all had a deep love for one another--and it is more important to show love than just to say it--a child still needs to hear those words, too.
It had been a challenge for me up to that point to feel real relationships with anyone outside of my immediate circle. I never developed relationships with other foster care kids because I knew we probably wouldn't be together long. After all, my view of the world was that if you had family bonds, you all got split up eventually. And with foster parents, it was hard for me to believe that they loved me even if they were kind and welcoming. They didn't birth me; they didn't hold me when I was little. They might come to love me like their own eventually, but it was hard to believe anyone could feel that way about me right off the bat.
But I felt like the Briarcrest community wanted me there, wanted to build relationships with me, wanted to make me feel welcomed into the school's family. And I started to feel like the Tuohys really wanted me there, too, and that they might really love me.
I didn't start out by staying there every night. It would just be a night or two at a time before I went somewhere else. But the Tuohys started asking questions. Leigh Anne isn't a lady who just lets things go. She asked about my family, and while I wasn't ready to open up, I did like how she was concerned about me. I liked that