Previously on Breaking Hip…

Eugene’s on his drive home, one of those drives where you feel like you’re standing at the quiet crossroads of ambition and humility, revisiting a long-shelved dream project – not to resurrect it with fireworks – but to cradle it gently and ask what it had been trying to say all along. In a surprising plot twist, Eugene wonders if the point of creativity wasn’t to be heard, but to listen – to the work itself, to the silence it left behind, and perhaps even to the source of inspiration he thought had started it all those years ago. Sometimes the bravest act maybe isn’t to finish the dream, but to let it speak in its unfinishedness. He decides to dust the script off to see what it has to say to him, and at that moment his cell phone lights up.

The Long Game

“I have an idea,” says younger brother Ken – words that, in our years of working together, are usually followed by the sound of something catching fire or catching flight. If I’ve ever done something bold or strange or creatively audacious, it’s a safe bet Ken was there with a hammer, a diagram, and a spreadsheet. Except for that one youth roadshow Suzanne and I stitched together in our early married days (bless those wide-eyed years) – pretty much everything else had Ken’s fingerprints on it.

This new idea? He wants to stage not one, but three of my scripts in his theater. He’s calling it “the triple play,” because of course he is. The plan is to see which one of them might rise up and wave, as if to say, “Me. With a little work, I’m ready for the next leap.” Maybe into a stage production, or even into a small, self-funded film with the help of good friends, Diet Coke, and just enough delusion to try to pull it off. Not quite a studio picture – but let’s be honest, these are not the days of studios clamoring for oddball projects anyway.

So I return to one of those old scripts – Home Run Club. It’s a tender, peculiar little piece about a group of charming misfits with terminal illnesses who live in a home next to Wrigley Field. Now Wrigley is a major league baseball park plopped in the middle of working class neighborhood called Wrigleyville. In the years since, the neighborhood has been commercialized and built up. But at the time, Wrigley Field was famous for its short left field, which meant the well-hit home run ball could actually exit the field of play, sail over the left field bleachers, and wind up landing on Waveland Avenue. This phenomenon led to the rise of an odd subculture of “ball hawks,” fanatics with mitts and nets dedicated to being first to scoop up the prize – a real life home run baseball – but! – not just any old baseball, because now they also have a story of their incredible courage to come away with the ball against all odds.

That’s the backdrop, which is what pulled me in to writing the story that unfolds here, but the bummer for me was that starting around 2014, the Cubs began building up the area, including the left field bleacher walls. Not as many balls landing on Waveland anymore, meaning my quirky little screenplay just became a period piece with a lot of CGI. Ka-ching (the cash-out kind, not the cash-in kind). That’s when I started mulling a stage version. Far more practical. Maybe even stronger as a play.

That point aside, this time, instead of digging it up with an eye toward structure and pacing, I ask a different question: What is this story trying to teach me in light of my recent health issues?

It’s your soul wanting to get up and go, while your body just wants to lie down and not be spoken to unless it’s to say “I brought you some cookies.”

First up, I had no idea what long-suffering really meant. I thought it was weepy and poetic – dignified, even. A noble affliction with a dramatic arc. But now I’m beginning to realize that real long-suffering is messy and mundane. It’s missing out. It’s losing track of time. It’s your soul wanting to get up and go, while your body just wants to lie down and not be spoken to unless it’s to say “I brought you some cookies.” It’s a weariness so deep it stops being dramatic and becomes administrative.

And yet… in that flat, gray place, something softens. I begin to notice others who live in similar quiet aches. And I realize maybe Home Run Club was never meant to be about kooky characters knocking out their bucket lists. Maybe it’s about something gentler. A character who knits hats for the homeless. One who gathers stuffed animals for police cruiser trunks to give to kids whose parents are having a rough day. Another who just sits with a neighbor whois having a hard time breathing. I don’t know.

Is that what I should be doing with the minuscule amount of mojo that is allotted to me? Like I’m supposed to do something?

I’d underestimated what this kind of pain does—not just to my characters, but to me. Maybe I’ve been aiming too big. Maybe the best way forward isn’t some attempt for creative glory, but a quiet surrender to the small, sacred work still available to me. A few kindnesses. And then let this actions inform my rewriting, not for applause, but for understanding.

Is that what I should be doing with the minuscule amount of mojo that is allotted to me? Like I’m supposed to do something? I thought this blog was more about writing as therapy, not being bossed into actually doing things. I need to mull this over a bit. Is it a little less about proving something, and a little more about participating in something? I’m reminded that the truth is we don’t always get to choose the outcome of our dreams – but we do get to choose if we show up to try.

Listen. Do. Write. Who knows? Maybe that’s the real triple play after all.