A Diamond In the Rough Away in a Manger
By Moira McMahon
About three months ago, I hit some serious writer’s block. A dashed romantic interest compounded by medical things and all sorts of feelings and emotions and phonecalls to friends resulted in an overall feeling of what is all this screenwriting bullshit anyway? So few things ever get made and the waiting is excruciating and who the hell cares? But beyond that was a much deeper fear - what if I just wasn’t very good?
And then I pitched this really good, really marketable, hook-em-all-in idea – to an agent – at an important place.
And he loved it. And I said I could write it in a few weeks.
And I couldn’t do it.
The drafts were so bad, the structure was totally off. The ease from which script after script had been penned, vanished. It vanished so abruptly; I even doubted I had any ability at all.
I thought about moving back home. I decided to start the move-home-plan by going home for the holidays.
My mother greeted me at the airport with two new eyes – permanent contact lenses and retinal surgery that allowed her - for the first time in my life – to find me in the crowd. She smiled and then turned all business, “We have to get home and get ready for the girls.”
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My mother has been in a book club for 25 years.
The book club is made up of about 30 women from our Irish and German Catholic neighborhood. Once a month, the O’Malley’s, the Schaffer's, the Zipp's, the Whips, the Donohughes, the O’Brien’s, O’Cetera, McCetera relinquish their lady of the house to join up with other ladies of a certain age to drink like fish, talk about their kids and their husbands and how the neighborhood is changing. Oh, and books – to talk about books.
My mom has asked me for a suggestion for the book club just once. I suggested Running With Scissors – the best selling memoir by Augusten Burroughs about a young gay man who gets adopted by his mother’s psychiatrist – perhaps you have seen the movie?
The book club spent the whole meeting arguing about whether or not a teenager could really know if they were gay. They couldn’t come to a consensus. But, they didn’t think so.
And now, I had flown in just in time - the night of the annual Book Club Christmas Party. Everyone was coming. The women stomped snow off their boots and hung their long wool coats in the front closets and took a seat at the table.
They were all mothers – most grandmothers – and wives – except for the one divorcee who had a long-time boyfriend everyone approved of because he could sing “Oh Danny Boy” very well.
After admiring everyone’s Christmas sweaters – with bells and bows hanging off the looping knit – the women got down to business. Who’s got a new grandchild? Who needs a new roof when spring comes? Whose husband still has cancer?
Well, Mrs. Schaffer’s husband was finally in remission after the bone marrow transplant! And she had the three-karat ring on her finger to prove it. Like a shinning star leading to the Christ child, Cookie Schaffer’s sparkler could be seen from every angle of the table.
For her anniversary, her husband had flown all the relatives in for a surprise party and presented Cookie with the biggest ring on the North Shore of Chicago. Claiming now, his cancer in remission, that they would have a new life together. He put his money where his mouth was and coughed up the diamond.
The blessed jewel was passed around the table and everyone oohed and ahhed. They talked of their rings and husbands and all the trips to the doctor’s and the surgeries and all the things that come taking care of their husbands who were tired from a lifetime of climbing the corporate ladder.
And the gab began. The women had so much to say about everything. To live and survive was to trade information – from where to get someone to hang the lights on your house so your husband doesn’t fall off the ladder, to rolling an IRA, to buying property in the city – these women where domestic encyclopedias.
Eventually the discussion wound down to the inevitable debate - what book to read for next month. The contenders went up and paperbacks were passed around the table – a trip to Africa? A New York lawyer’s life or Dreams of My Father, the Barak Obama memoir?
Mrs. Zipperich took a seat next to me, her shoulders rounded in that familiar way my one mother has taken on post-menopause. In a quick flash I wondered if she took Fosamax and thought about what doctor she should see for Osteoporosis… 
“How are things in California?” she asked .
And suddenly, without trying, the truth came out.
“I pitched this idea and I can’t write it. I’m blocked.”
She smiled the smile I have trusted since I was five and over the din of Catholic grandmothers arguing over books she said with all the exuberance in the world, “I know you can do it. You can do anything.”
And looking around at all these women who had been swapping stories since they were breast feeding their first daughters who were calling them for tips to feed their granddaughters and the tireless devotion to their husbands and homes and hanging the Christmas lights year after year and my own mother who had just completed six months of reconstructive surgery on both of her eyes and Cookie Schaffer’s ring shinning out over us all – I believed her.
Because I am one of the daughters who watched her mother put down her apron one night a month and return mysteriously late and usually tipsy and wondered what had she talked about? What was the big secret?
The secret was, they were all helping each other. They were all swapping stories and they still are.
After much debate, the Barak Obama book won and the conversation turned to where the book was on sale and who could lend their copy.
Dreams of My Father is about Barak Obama’s journey to find out who he is in the context of his mother and father in a complicated world.
That night, for a few hours, I knew exactly who I was.
I am a daughter of the women who had few choices outside of marriage and children so they threw themselves into that path with vigor and vim, having child after child and watching their husbands’ careers sail up and then decline and now they are still taking care of the families and each other. Through it all, picking another story to throw into the mix for next month’s book club.
On the plane home, I started the script. I don’t know how many drafts it will take but I am going to do it.
Because I have grown into a woman with choices and I can do anything.
__
__________________________________________
Update: Ah, yeah. The script is still not good. But I wrote something else which is much better. Perhaps if the strike ever ends I can sell it and like, be a success or something. Happy Holidays everyone. Next year, we can do anything.
The blessed jewel was passed around the table and everyone oohed and ahhed. They talked of their rings and husbands and all the trips to the doctor’s and the surgeries and all the things that come taking care of their husbands who were tired from a lifetime of climbing the corporate ladder.
And the gab began. The women had so much to say about everything. To live and survive was to trade information – from where to get someone to hang the lights on your house so your husband doesn’t fall off the ladder, to rolling an IRA, to buying property in the city – these women where domestic encyclopedias.
Eventually the discussion wound down to the inevitable debate - what book to read for next month. The contenders went up and paperbacks were passed around the table – a trip to Africa? A New York lawyer’s life or Dreams of My Father, the Barak Obama memoir?
Mrs. Zipperich took a seat next to me, her shoulders rounded in that familiar way my one mother has taken on post-menopause. In a quick flash I wondered if she took Fosamax and thought about what doctor she should see for Osteoporosis…
“How are things in California?” she asked .
And suddenly, without trying, the truth came out.
“I pitched this idea and I can’t write it. I’m blocked.”
She smiled the smile I have trusted since I was five and over the din of Catholic grandmothers arguing over books she said with all the exuberance in the world, “I know you can do it. You can do anything.”
And looking around at all these women who had been swapping stories since they were breast feeding their first daughters who were calling them for tips to feed their granddaughters and the tireless devotion to their husbands and homes and hanging the Christmas lights year after year and my own mother who had just completed six months of reconstructive surgery on both of her eyes and Cookie Schaffer’s ring shinning out over us all – I believed her.
Because I am one of the daughters who watched her mother put down her apron one night a month and return mysteriously late and usually tipsy and wondered what had she talked about? What was the big secret?
The secret was, they were all helping each other. They were all swapping stories and they still are.
After much debate, the Barak Obama book won and the conversation turned to where the book was on sale and who could lend their copy.
Dreams of My Father is about Barak Obama’s journey to find out who he is in the context of his mother and father in a complicated world.
That night, for a few hours, I knew exactly who I was.
I am a daughter of the women who had few choices outside of marriage and children so they threw themselves into that path with vigor and vim, having child after child and watching their husbands’ careers sail up and then decline and now they are still taking care of the families and each other. Through it all, picking another story to throw into the mix for next month’s book club.
On the plane home, I started the script. I don’t know how many drafts it will take but I am going to do it.
Because I have grown into a woman with choices and I can do anything.
__
__________________________________________Update: Ah, yeah. The script is still not good. But I wrote something else which is much better. Perhaps if the strike ever ends I can sell it and like, be a success or something. Happy Holidays everyone. Next year, we can do anything.
