A Strange Love on the Blind Side

My wife and I went to see the movie “The Blind Side” last night. We were a little late to the party, but we’ve been fighting viruses around here for the past month, and that hasn’t left much time for movies.

I have to admit that I was tearing up through a lot of the movie though for reasons not related to the major subject. The “Leigh Ann” character, as played by Sandra Bullock, reminded me immediately of my mother. Mom passed away close to twenty years ago, a middle aged but terribly worn out woman. She didn’t look anything like Leigh Ann (real or Bullock version). She didn’t speak with the same accent. She didn’t have as peaceful a marriage, as well behaved children, and in the matter of wealth we ended up closer to the “Hurt Village” side of the economic scale than the well mannered neighborhood of the Tuhy’s. She didn’t go to Ole’ Miss, Young Miss, in fact she missed college altogether.

Now, if you find yourself asking “Just what is the connection?” then you need not consider yourself alone. It really is hard to find something in common between these women separated by so much. I had a hard time thinking of it myself. The connection is that like our heroine, my mother was a woman of love. Not soft love, to be sure. She could put you in your place and then knock you out of it again when she had to. She didn’t have a chance to embrace life. She spent much of her time trying to survive it, but her own survival never came before those whom she cared about. It was a fierce love, a ferocious love, a love built on respect that demanded no less.

It was the same kind of love demonstrated by a woman who took in a boy four times her size, be sheltered by him at need, but more than ready to shelter him. It was a love that stood up to friends or family who could often hurt deeper than the most vicious enemy. And it was a love that dared to doubt itself when certainty would harm a loved one.

There have been many comments regarding the story line of the movie. Most have viewed as a positive and uplifting story of how love is colorblind, kindness is universal, and inspired by a loving God to live within us. I like those comparisons. There have been other comments, less enthusiastic, how the story is little more than dressed up racial bigotry dressed up as virtue. I will not address those. I don’t think Michael Oher has any question which comments are closest to the truth.

For me, the story touched deepest on a comparison seldom made about this story. Where most ask what might have happened to Michael Oher if not for a loving family, I find myself asking “What would have happened to Leigh Ann? What would have happened to her on the poor side of town, with a family and husband far less perfect, a chance to go to college passed up in favor of marriage, a life that seems to wear you down a lot more than it ever built you up? I don’t know for sure because I don’t think there is just one answer. There are many. And now I look back to memories of my mother, and part of me weeps for how much she could have done. If only…

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~ by gbaker13 on March 21, 2010.