Mia Farrow's story

It was closed to 1A.M when I finished reading Mia Farrow’s memoir, “What Falls Away”  last night. I didn't know what to make out of the book until the very end. It was kind of confusing, you know?

I must admit starting the book with some presumptions that I wouldn’t like the book. She is a celebrity, born and raised in a privileged home. This is not the kind of story I enjoy reading, I thought. But my feelings changed as each chapter progressed.

First I said, “Poor child,” when she was struck with polio at the age nine. Then her affairs with Frank Sinatra I was not impressed. At her tender age she didn’t need the love and betrayal of that manipulator, I thought.

Mr. Sinatra practically wrapped her around in his thumb. He was using her as his spare shoe, called her in his place and visited her when he needed. Asking her to sign a divorce paper she had not even read was preposterous! I pitied Mia for her inability to stand up for herself.

After all the anguish with Sinatra, she fell in André Previn’s trap. “She is so shallow. She can’t control herself when she sees rich and famous men; what for?,” was question. I was angry with her!

I had lost complete respect for Mia by the time I read her marrying the eccentric bully, Woody Allen.  Her inability to keep her adopted baby girl (Soon-Yi) away from his sexual touch angered me a lot!

I also thought it was very immature of her to keep adopting so many children when her own personal security was in jeopardy. “What is she trying to prove?” “Was she trying to create a human-shield for herself, so that nobody can hurt her anymore?” I accused her.

Then, I went on searching for more of her stories to make some sense out of her life and legacy. The more I came to know her, her desire and the devotion for her biological as well as the adopted children, the more respect grew in me for her.

She was a child of immigrant parents. She grew up watching her parents’ struggles and triumphs in trying to establish their new lives in the adopted country, USA. Her parent’s short-lived fame and fortune had introduced her to the world of rich and famous life-style. She had learned to admire the ‘privileged’ people, not knowing exactly what lay underneath their pretentious lives.

Her sense of righteousness seems to have sprung from Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham jail”, a response to the clergymen’s “A Call for Unity” in 1963. But her passion for love and her need to be compassionate seemed to have grown out of her own insecurity at home and from her unstable marriages, in my opinion.

My concluding thoughts about Mia are that she is a woman who always longed for love but there was none for her when she needed the most. She understood the futility of life, perhaps more than others. Loving the destitute (kids) provided her the redemption and salvation she needed so badly since she was a child.

My favorite paragraph from her memoir:

“I’ve often thought how presump- tuous I was – to assume that I could be good enough to be the person that all of them need...”. “I just knew that … it’s a philosophical question: if you walk by a pond and there’s a baby drowning, are you allowed to walk by the pond? Well, people are walking by the pond all the time.”