Story Frame 38 – It’s a Wrap

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.”

C.S. Lewis

“It’s a wrap” is a phrase often used in filmmaking to tell actors and production crew that the filming of a particular scene or film has finished. “Wrap” may or may not be an acronym for “wind, reel and print.” Some are relieved to hear these words; others are not.

I don’t recall Martin ever using this phrase on any of our films, but the essence of it hung in the air as we approached Christmas 1999 – and my last paycheck.

In my case, it wasn’t a clear wrap. Instead, the last of my days at the documentary workshop ended with more of a slow fade, another film term. In January, Martin and I parted ways, each to pursue our own paths. He moved onto the next film project and I tumbled headlong back into the dark abyss of no work and no steady income.

Throughout the coming year, Martin and I met periodically at Misha’s Coffeehouse in Old Town for progress updates on American Byzantine over mugs of strong black coffee.

Having lost my place at the documentary workshop, I was using Misha’s as the space where I met friends and colleagues for job leads and freelance work. It was also often the setting for my writing sessions even though, between the coffee machines and chatting patrons, there was never a shortage of noise.

Misha’s had its own unique ‘room tone.’ I liked those ambient sounds and found them soothing. And whether they were playing Ray Charles, jazz or punk, the music almost always matched my mood. If not, I found I adapted to it. The odd art on the blue and yellow and green walls was always interesting and I found the nonsensical mix of chairs and tables strangely comforting. I am freed from being a perfectionist when it’s someone else’s place. Misha’s offered just the right amount of distraction. I could relax and think and write in its atmosphere.

Bonhoeffer, the last film I worked on at the documentary workshop was finally finished. Martin did a limited theatrical run in movie theaters before it was released on PBS.

I took Zoë and Leif to see it at the Avalon Theater on Connecticut Avenue in the northwest part of Washington DC. Stephen, our sound guy who by then had become a good friend, came with us. Post-documentary film workshop days, Stephen and I stayed in close touch. I always thought he had something of a Roy Orbison vibe about him, and I mean that in a good way. Stephen’s sight is better, and his hair no longer that dark, but I think their voices are similar even though I’ve never heard Stephen sing. Periodically, I invited him over to the house to have dinner with me & the kids. He was the one who taught Leif how to assemble a computer from parts.

Zoë and Leif both dozed off within the first half hour of Bonhoeffer. I let them sleep until the end when I woke them up so they could watch the credit scroll and see my name on the big screen, if only for a nanosecond. I wanted them to know who I was in my other, non-mom life. Having accompanied me on numerous production shoots, they likely already had a pretty good idea, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I wanted them to know I was real.

At our last coffee get together, Martin told me he’d given the shoes he'd been wearing the first night we met – the shoes that had started everything – to a homeless person he'd encountered during a shoot in Los Angeles. I was surprised he’d done this; he knew their significance to me.

Then again, perhaps it was a fitting way to end things. As my sister used to say when encouraging me to get rid of something, Honey, it’s time for someone else to have a turn.

I tried to settle my bruised ego and ruffled feathers with the thought that perhaps they would bring a little magic and a new path to someone else who desperately needed it, just as they once did for me.

More than anything else he’d said to me, giving away those shoes telegraphed Martin’s message loud and clear: our time together was over. It was time for me to let go and reach for the next monkey bar, even if I couldn’t yet see it and it felt like my hand was just grasping at air.

My mother was aware that, not long before she’d died, Karen had given Martin a beautiful tile table she had designed and crafted, most likely as an advance wedding gift to both of us. It was one of the best pieces she’d ever made. The cost of it in a gallery on Long Boat Key in Sarasota where she sold her designs would have put it well beyond my range. My mother was very disturbed that Martin had kept it and not given it back to me after breaking off our relationship.

“You should get that back!” she told me, angrily. “If he’s not marrying you, he shouldn’t keep it. Karen would not have wanted that!”

I didn’t know how to respond. Yes, I wanted her table back, and felt he should have given it to me after he broke things off. But I couldn’t bring myself to go back into what had been, for such a brief time, “our house.”

My mother was quiet for a few moments. What she said next surprised me.

“Would you mind if I went over there and got it?” she asked.

I looked at her in astonishment.

“No, of course not,” I said, wondering how that might actually turn out. My mother was far braver in this moment than I was. But then, she didn’t have the emotional baggage I was carrying around inside my head and heart.

She didn’t say anything more until a few days later when she drove triumphantly up my driveway with the table in the backseat of her car. Seeing it again, I almost broke down in tears. Together, we brought it in and from that moment on, Karen’s beautiful table has had pride of place in my house, wherever I’ve lived.

“I always thought of Martin as your second husband,” my mother said, over a celebratory glass of wine that evening.

I swirled the wine in my glass, staring at it as a montage of the many tasks and responsibilities I’d learned over the past seven years ran through my mind: art history researcher, associate producer, co-scriptwriter, location scout, driver for talent, interviewee make-up person, production assistant, international location scout, international location manager, grant writer, permits and international visa coordinator, transportation coordinator, US President interview-getter, past US president meeting-getter, national broadcast airdates coordinator, fundraiser, and publicist. I’d even managed to wrangle a “Distinguished Alumni” Award for Martin from his alma mater, Boston College because I knew someone on the board from a previous job.

“That’s funny,” I said to my mother. “I always thought of him as my second degree. My film degree.”

And that was something he couldn’t give away to anyone else.

[photos of Misha’s Coffeehouse by Kristin]

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