Irish Wishing Well

I was competing in a sixth-grade spelling bee, lined up in front of the room with all my other classmates in our Catholic school uniforms. I think I must have been bored, standing there, waiting for my turn. I saw a shiny, golden apple, which I guessed might have been a paperweight, on my teacher’s desk. It was so tantalizing how it caught the light. On an impulse, I reached out and touched it. To my surprise, it was a bell. Its lovely ringing filled the air but it was not a pleasing sound to my teacher. The ferocity with which her blue eyes blazed, would have made you think I was Eve herself. She banished me from a little Eden at that moment. I was a good speller, forced to take a seat and be a fallen spectator.

I have often thought about how the atmosphere would have been different if she had laughed off my musical interruption as a minor humorous infraction, but her reaction was swift and strict. It felt like a moral judgment, only someone with her authority could make. She was after all not just a teacher, but a nun.

This childhood memory replayed in my mind as I watched Philomena, a 2013 film directed by Stephen Frears, on Netflix. The film is inspired by the true events of a 2009 book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son and a 50 Year Search by Martin Sixsmith. While there is one significant, sweet nun in the movie, the villains decidedly wear habits and their more modern look of cross pendants and concern. (This is a depiction some nuns find unfair). In the case of Philomena, the Irish teen whose name is the title of the movie, the punishment meted out is much worse than being kicked out of a spelling bee. She loses her freedom and her child is taken away from her.

In most of the film, Philomena is an older woman played by the incomparable Judi Dench, but there are flashbacks to the 1950s when she is a naive girl (Sophie Kennedy Clark) who meets a handsome boy at a fair. He leans in to kiss her and she drops her caramel apple. Later as she is asked a series of humiliating questions by a panel of judges…er…nuns, she pleads that the sisters at her school never taught her where babies come from, while bowing her head. She is asked why her mother didn’t tell her and another nun interjects and states that her mother died ten years ago. After saying “Oh, God rest her soul,” the Reverend Mother, scolds, “Don’t dare blame the sisters for this. You are the cause of this shame, you and your indecency.”

Her father has left her at Sean Ross Abbey Mother and Baby Home in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, Ireland. Philomena explains, “After you’d had your baby, you had to stay in the abbey for four years. In order to repay the sisters for taking you in, you had to work. The worst jobs were in the laundry, that’s where they put me. I worked there seven days a week, the whole time I was there. I worked there with my best friend, Kathleen. We were allowed to see our children for an hour a day, that was all.”

Later, she tells journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope) that she could have left if she paid the nuns 100 pounds, but she reflects, “But where would I get that kind of money? And where would I go?” Her toddler, Anthony, doesn’t stay though. Guilt compels her to sign a piece of paper and according to the film, babies of unwed mothers are adopted by wealthy Americans for 1,000 pounds. She actually watches as he is taken away.

Fifty years later, Philomena ponders what has become of her son on his milestone birthday. Martin, whose job as a press secretary has hit a rough patch (He was unfairly fired.), is her traveling companion on the journey in Ireland (and later America), so that he can write a human-interest story. In a touching scene, he comforts her as she worries, that among other fates, her son might be in prison or a Vietnam War casualty or homeless.

Still, it is the contrast between their personalities that helps them prod each other on, but it also creates a bit of tension. He pushes for more information, she softens his sharp edges, at one point chastising him for being rude. Martin is highly educated, upper class, and slightly cynical with atheistic leanings while she is sweet, unpretentious, trusting and despite her past, devoutly Catholic.

Their unlikely partnership also provides comedic relief. At the start of their transatlantic flight to look for Anthony, he reads a book about Russian history and she reads a historical romance, which she describes in detail to Martin. They are both determined, however, to solve this mystery, despite tight-lipped nuns, a suspicious fire, and the cruel passage of time.

When my sister, Stephanie, and I were visiting Ireland we found it hard to fathom that a tragedy as horrible as the Irish Potato Famine could have happened in such a beautiful place, forcing our ancestors to leave. Steph was moved to tears, grieving their loss. Likewise, it’s difficult to fathom that little Anthony was forced to leave his mother and his homeland behind before he ever really knew either of them. In one of the scenes of the Irish countryside, Martin and Philomena are having a conversation about the pleasure of sex and the shame that is imposed on a natural act, amidst rolling green hills. As an echo of Martin’s indignation, nature itself feels like a rebuke of such rigidity.

Still, judging is a part of our human nature that inflicts damage, especially when supported by a powerful religious institution. One of Mother Teresa’s most famous quotes is, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” You can also stop them from growing, either by spelling a word in front of a class or raising a child as a young mom.