Diary for Slate.com
October 8, 2001
It was a beautiful weekend. There was a chill in the air and the Monarch butterflies were winging their way to Mexico. I set all my writing aside, left my computer at home, and drove with my wife and kids to the Texas Hill Country where I’ve been building a cabin overlooking the Llano River. Every trip I make to the river is a pilgrimage, for I spent much of my childhood at my grandmother’s ranch on the river’s headwaters — wading, swimming and fishing in the cold spring water that eventually runs over the granite outcroppings at the property we now own. My family lost my grandmother’s ranch when I was in high school, and I spent the next thirty years trying to figure out how to get back a piece of the river.
But as a comedian, then a freelance writer of books and television, the price of waterfront land was always just out of my reach. Whenever I started to make more money, the prices went up. Then on Valentine’s Day, 2000, while I was writing a magazine story in Belize, my wife sent me an e-mail saying her mammogram had shown something suspicious. I came home to a diagnosis of DCIS – Ductal Carcinoma In Situ. We went from doctor to doctor and the word ‘mastectomy’ kept hitting us like a hammer. Eighteen months later, I still couldn’t say which one of us was more scared.
Running from what we could not escape, one day we dropped the kids at school and headed for the river, driving on back-country roads till we came to a low-water crossing built by German settlers in the 19th Century. In the space of one day, we fell in love with the land overlooking that crossing, learned it was for sale, and made an offer to buy it. Eighteen months later — with my wife having beat her breast cancer and begun teaching yoga for a living — the river has become a central part of our lives.
We have no television or radio at the cabin; it’s too good here for all that. This weekend, with the wind blowing cool out of the north, we built a campfire in the late afternoon, then grilled steaks and vegetables by the light of an orange and violet sunset. Within an hour, the sky was brilliant with stars, the Milky Way shining bright from horizon to horizon. Just before bed-time, my daughters and I looked up and all saw the same shooting star.
It’s never easy for me to escape my work. People tell me they envy my carefree life as a writer, but they don’t have any idea how hard I have to work to keep from having a job. To cobble together one real income, I write for television, film, magazines and try to turn out a book every couple of years. That means long, butt-throbbing hours at my desk, and very short nights in bed. It’ll be a miracle if I get any writing done this week. A one-hour episode I wrote for a great new Showtime series – Going to California – will be filming in Austin and I’m hoping to see as much of the action as possible. I’ll also be working on a documentary on Willie Nelson for American Masters on PBS, and I’m moderating panels and hosting events at one of my favorite events of the year, the Austin Film Festival.
At last year’s festival, I chaired a panel with David Chase, the creator and Executive Producer of HBO’s hit, The Sopanos. Before the panel, we talked a bit about my experiences in Italy interviewing lawyers and hitmen for the ‘Ndrangetta, the fearful Calabrian mafia. When the panel started, David was looking at me kind of funny and I thought I must have said something wrong. Far from it, a couple of days later the casting director of The Sopranos called to see if I’d videotape an audition for the show. The role was a total hoot – the born-again, narcoleptic boyfriend of Tony’s sister Janice. They faxed the script, I sent back a tape and a couple of weeks later I was in Queens falling asleep on Tony Sopranos shoulder and having him bounce walnuts off my sleeping noggin at the Soprano’s Thanksgiving dinner.
For a writer whose future depends to a great extent on a larger audience discovering his work, this tiny brush with fame was a dream come true. All the better when the show brought me back for a couple more episodes, giving me some fun scenes with Aida Turturro, a wonderful actress who makes Janice one of The Sopranos’ most memorable characters. When Aida was nominated for an Emmy for her work this year, I felt sure I’d soon be in front of the TV watching her accept her award.
Then came September 11th. The week after the bombings, I could not look away from the television. I had to know everything, had to e-mail everyone I knew. For some reason, I felt a compulsion to be a reassuring voice, to tell my friends and family that somehow everything would be okay. A lot of nice words came back for my efforts, but I also got the worst possible news from too many friends whose family members, business associates and college buddies had been in the Trade Centers. On one of my trips to film The Sopranos, I’d taken my 10-year daughter to the top of the World Trade Center. Now she wanted to know about the people we’d seen there, and what would happen to the children of those people who’d died. My voice began to sound less and less reassuring. And our refuge at the river began to seem more and more important.
It was still cool this morning when we hiked down the granite point to the river’s edge. It was a little late in the year for a swim, but I waded in till my knees were wet, decided it was too cold and turned back to shore. Then I slipped on the slick rock and the river gave me my baptism anyway. Once I was wet, I went ahead a paddled around in what turned out to be the best swim of the year. And then I headed back to Austin to watch Aida win her Award.
It was a beautiful weekend, but then I turned on the TV. America Strikes Back was a harsh return to reality. The awards, of course, were pushed from our concerns, and the war had started without me. Now I find myself trying to remember my long ago friends, David and Lynn Angell who died on American Flight 11; find myself trying to imagine rushing to the rescue of innocent men, women and children, knowing you might never return, or what it must be like to be under bombs and missiles raining down from the sky. I try to think of all the things we need to think of when our country is at war, but instead my mind keeps returning to the Monarchs, their orange and black wings brilliant in the sun as they fly unknowing across the borders of man in their ancient pilgrimage of life.
And the week is just beginning.