The promise of a stable two-parent in adoption home is not a guarantee

Jane

Many of us in contemplating adoption for our unborn child envisioned a home that we wished we had. I know I did. A devoted mother and father, just one or no siblings, having my own room.

My parents divorced when I was 15 but were emotionally separated for years before that. I envied the girls whose fathers drove them to school when the temperature was below freezing, which was frequent in Chicago winters, fathers who took them to movies, who were just there, unlike my father who was rarely around. In mid-century, it was, if not a disgrace, at least an embarrassment not to have an active father in the home. We were told to be raised in a "broken home" was a recipe for failure. I had four siblings and had to share a room with an older sister. My mother was 36 when I was born, at least a decade older than my friends' mothers, and to me old-fashioned in her dress and hairstyle. She was a teacher at a public high school and did her best--something I did not appreciate for many years--but school clothes from Sears was all she could afford, unlike my classmate clothed by Marshall Field.

Top of the Lake: China Girl--Part detective story, part reunion story, all riveting

Anybody else watch the Top of the Lake: China Girl on Sundance?

It's a detective story, all right, set in Australia, but it turned out to be a who-done-it wrapped around a first/birth mother reunion complete with adoptive mother Nicole Kidman playing the adoptive mother. Already I'm hooked.

The detective story involves a body of an Asian girl which is stuffed in a trunk that washes up on a beach around Sydney; but nearly as soon as that plot line begins we learn that the detective Robin (the talented Elisabeth Moss), is going to the home of the adoptive family of her daughter. In the previous series of Top of the Lake, we'd learned that she had given up a child to be adopted. Robin had been raped on prom night by three guys; she was 16 when the girl was born. The adoptive parents had written her in her native New Zealand, but she did not respond. Now a few years later, she's in Australia, and goes to their home.

Seventeen-year-old daughter Mary (Alice Englert) is rebellious, has a terrible relationship with her adoptive mother (Kidman), and is coincidentally involved with a sinister nut job who's much older than she is and who will be part of the who-done-it.

Lion: An adoptee returns home

If you haven't already seen Lion, grab a hankie and catch it before it is gone. Besides being a compelling story and a well acted film, it reinforces what we who live adoption know to be true: the need to know one's original family is universal. It could be the story of a young girl from Kansas or a weary warrior in Greece. No matter how difficult the journey, it must be attempted.

Lion is based on the Saroo Bierley's memoir "A Long Way Home." Five-year- old Saroo lives in abysmal poverty with his mother, sister and older brother, Guddu, in a small village in India. One evening he goes with Guddu, whom he adores, to the train station. Guddu tells him to wait there while he seeks work. When, after many hours, Guddu does not return, Saroo crawls into a train and falls asleep. The train leaves the station. He is unable to get off the train until it arrives in Calcutta several days later. Saroo has to survive on the mean streets, which is particularly difficult because he speaks Hindi, not Bengali, the language of Calcutta.  Eventually he is taken to an orphanage which arranges his adoption by a kind and loving Australian couple, Sue and John Bierley. The contrast between the hovel where he lived for his first five years and the Bierley's beautiful home and opulent surroundings in Tasmania could not be more stark.