I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [59]
So when I made up my mind at last, I could finally breathe a little easier--it was like I'd been holding my breath for months. I didn't have a whole lot of time to enjoy the moment, though, since I still had to worry about my grades for graduation and eligibility. And I didn't get much of a summer break after graduating high school, either. All my friends from school were taking off on vacation and enjoying their last summer before college, but I was hitting the books for the last of those extra courses to help my GPA. And then almost as soon as that studying was over, it was time to pick up and move to Oxford, Mississippi, for football training.
It was a very busy summer for me, because there was one other pretty major event that happened right after I graduated high school: I became a legal member of the Tuohy family. Leigh Anne and Sean had already assumed responsibility for me as guardians, which allowed them to sign my school permission slips and take me to medical appointments. This last step was the one that would make everything binding.
It kind of felt like a formality, as I'd been a part of the family for more than a year at that point. Since I was already over the age of eighteen and considered an adult by the state of Tennessee, Sean and Leigh Anne would be named as my "legal conservators." They explained to me that it means pretty much the exact same thing as "adoptive parents," but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account. Honestly, I didn't care what it was called. I was just happy that no one could argue that we weren't legally what we already knew was real: We were a family.
I wish I could say it was just an uneventful morning with a trip to the courthouse and then a nice brunch to celebrate. Unfortunately, I found my past and my future in conflict yet again.
My mother was going to be at the hearing to agree that she supported the decision to have the Tuohys listed as my next of kin and legal conservators, and we were supposed to pick her up on the way to court. Leigh Anne was driving (Sean was meeting us there), but when we pulled up to my mother's house in Alabama Plaza, she wasn't waiting for us. I ran inside to get her so we wouldn't be late, but a certain person answered her door who I knew was bad news. He was an old boyfriend of hers who she had broken up with before and who I had hoped was out of her life for good. But there he was and just the sight of him sucked all the joy out of what was otherwise a happy, joyful morning for me.
I stormed out to the car, and even though Leigh Anne wanted to know what the matter was (she could tell from the look on my face that I was furious), I didn't say a word. My mother came running out a minute or two later and we all headed to the courthouse together. But I was haunted by seeing that man because it was just another reminder of the trap of bad decisions that she was stuck in. I had been surrounded by those kinds of bad cycles of behavior my entire childhood and finally felt like I had escaped. And yet on the very morning that I was legally breaking free from the 'hood, there was an in-my-face reminder of the kind of life that might have been mine.
It was very much a but-for-the-grace-of-God moment for me. I knew that I had escaped--but how many other kids were there who were just like me but would never get the chance I did? It was depressing to think about. I figured that I owed it to all those kids to do something great with the opportunities I'd been given.
The court hearing was quick--probably only about fifteen or twenty minutes, beginning to end. My mother was supportive of the whole thing and there wasn't a whole lot of emotion all around because it was just a matter of formalizing the way we'd all been living for the past year. After court, we all went out to brunch together to celebrate.