Prairie Tale: A Memoir - Softcover

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Melissa Gilbert starred as Laura Ingalls Wilder on the hit NBC television show Little House on the Prairie. She has starred in numerous movies and recently served as president of the Screen Actors Guild for two terms. She is the author of Prairie Tale, My Prairie Cookbook, and My Little House on the Prairie. She resides in the Catskills with her husband.

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Prairie Tale

one

FAIRY DUST

My mother was nearly a month past her husband’s funeral when she turned her attention back to my desire to write a memoir. It wasn’t just a desire; there was an actual book deal, and she was against it. If the book were on any topic other than myself, she would’ve already been circulating word that “Melissa is writing the best book ever.” But this was different. It was about me. Which meant it was also about her. And she was against telling that story if she wasn’t the one doing the telling.

She had tried numerous times to talk me out of it, but her efforts were interrupted by the death of my stepfather, Hollywood publicist Warren Cowan. Now she was back on point.

She showed up at my house one afternoon carrying a large box packed with news clippings, ads, letters, and diaries of mine. She set it down on the kitchen table with a thud and announced with a smile as deadly as a pearl-handled Derringer that the contents would be helpful.

“For your book,” she said, pronouncing the word “book” as if it were a petrie dish containing the Ebola virus that I was going to let out in the world.

I marveled at her gamesmanship—and at her. She looked a decade younger than her age, which, if revealed, would be taken as a bigger crime than revealing Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. Her hair was blond and coiffed. It’s sufficient and necessary to say she was strikingly attractive. She looked great whether going to her weekly appointment at the hair salon or to movie night at the Playboy mansion, which she and my stepfather had attended for years.

I also cringed at the layers at play here in my kitchen. I thought, thank goodness I have four sons. The mother-daughter relationship is one of mankind’s great mysteries, and for womankind it can be hellaciously complicated. My mother and I are quintessential examples of the rewards and frustrations and the joys and infuriations this relationship can yield. By and large, we are close. At times, though, she could render me speechless with her craftiness. Now was one of those times.

While I sifted through the box packed with sacred bits from my life, my mother offered sly commentary and full-on reinterpretations of the contents. Ah, the contempt and fear and anger she hid behind her helpful smile.

To me, at forty-four years old, my book was a search for truth and identity. To her, it was—if only you could have seen the look on her face, you’d fully understand—the ultimate betrayal.

I moved on. I made tea. We talked about some of the condolences about Warren that continued to stream in. We mentioned which friends checked on her, the dinner invitations that kept her busy as ever, and of course the latest comings and goings of my husband, Bruce, and my sons. Finally, after we had caught each other up on everything, she returned to the book.

“You can write the book if you want,” she said with a nonchalant shrug.

“Thank you,” I replied. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“I can understand why you want to write it,” my mother said. “You write it and get it all out of you.”

“Thank you.”

“You have my blessing.”

“Thank you again.”

“But,” she said, “the classy thing would be to burn it after you’re finished.”

 

My life was a mystery even as I lived it.

Several months earlier, I had called my mother and asked if I’d ever had a conversion ceremony to make me officially Jewish. Although I was raised Jewish, my upbringing didn’t include any formal religious education or training. We celebrated Passover and other major Jewish holidays. But we also celebrated Christmas and Easter. It’s why I always emphasized the “ish” in “Jewish.”

As I got older, though, I grew more observant and intrigued by a more personal relationship with God. One day, as I discussed this with a friend who had converted to Judaism as an adult, she asked if I recalled my conversion ceremony.

“Huh?” I said.

My friend explained that adults wanting to switch to Judaism from another religion had to go through a conversion process. It included reading and discussion among friends; a deeper course of investigation with a rabbi; then study, immersion, and approval by a board, culminating with a public ceremony and celebration.

Even though I was just a day old when my parents adopted me, my friend explained my parents would still have needed a rabbi to perform a ceremony and a blessing to make me officially Jewish. That’s when I asked my mother if she recalled doing the ceremony.

“Why do you need to know now?” she asked.

“Because if I never had a conversion ceremony, then I’m not really Jewish,” I replied. “And if I’m not Jewish—”

“But you’re Jewish,” she interrupted.

“Who says?” I asked.

“I do.”

“Mom, believe it or not, you are not the final authority on this issue.”

“I’m your mother,” she said. “And I’m Jewish.”

“But my birth parents—”

“We adopted you at birth.”

“Was there a conversion ceremony?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“No?”

When it came to my childhood, my mother’s memory was more reliable than the Apple-S command on my laptop, so I knew she had the information filed away somewhere. I switched tactics. I asked if she remembered what I did for my second birthday. She did, and described the party she threw me. I then asked if she remembered my first birthday party. She recounted that, too, including the flavor of the cake and the bakery where she bought it.

“Mom,” I said with a dramatic pause worthy of the best courtroom lawyer, “you can remember my first and second birthday parties as if they happened an hour ago. But you can’t remember whether you hired a rabbi and had a conversion ceremony for me. How is that?”

“Melissa!”

“Mom!”

“Maybe I didn’t have one,” she said. “I don’t really know. What’s the big deal?”

“It means I’m not Jewish,” I said. “It means I’m not who I thought I was for all these years. It changes everything.”

 

Okay, I exaggerated. It wouldn’t change everything. When I hung up the phone, I was still going to be me: dressed in sweats, juggling car-pool duties, going to meetings, planning dinner, trying to wedge more into my day than twenty-four hours permitted. In one sense, my life would be fundamentally unchanged.

However, in another sense, my inner compass had already started to spin wildly out of control. Was there a conversion ceremony? That was a simple question. Was I who I thought I was? Not such a simple question.

Welcome to my not-so-simple life. My mother, whom I love dearly, has continually revised my life story within the context of a complicated family history that includes more than the usual share of divorce, stepchildren, dysfunction, and obfuscation, and I’ve spent most of my adult life attempting to deconstruct that history and separate...