Rachel @ Eileen: like a blade of grass, 2 (Shine- Anna Nalick)
One of Rachel's (not Diamond, never Diamond when she's at home) fondest memories is of a day when they-- the Eichelns-- had somehow managed to find themselves not mobbed by paparazzi as they enjoyed themselves in a park. Darren wasn't in the picture just yet, so it was just the three of them, she and Edgar and Eileen taking a few hours to be a family. They'd spent a good chunk of the time rolling down hills, getting blades of grass caught up in their hair and clothes and mouth and it was thrilling, to be such a put-together mess. She remembered a time in her youth when she had envied the grass its freedom, its ability to just be, be everywhere with very few people caring about the hows or whys. Rolling down hills with her husband and daughter felt like being a blade of grass, experiencing the freedom that was a price of being a star.
The days of hill-rolling and being a completely happy family become fewer and farther between after the Fire and the children growing up and growing away. Eileen is more disillusioned than starstruck by “Mother's Famous Friends,” becomes tired of the constant, “You're the daughter of that Rachel Eicheln?” and so on and so forth. She decides not to follow the family business (like Rachel'd secretly hoped) and goes straight off to college instead.
Rachel decides shortly after she's not disappointed. Her daughter is brilliant-- she's known this for years, of course, but it's much clearer when she's no longer so much in her shadow. Eileen shines in ways more than just beating her mother at Scrabble. She is intelligent and smart and she is growing up all on her own, being free as a blade of grass.
And so when some of her similarly-aged celebrity friends bemoan the waste of what's surely good talent, Rachel just smiles. Laughs. Wonders if perhaps there's a way to capture the feeling of rolling down a hill on a sunny day with one's family in music, so she can help them understand that it doesn't really matter what her daughter does, so long as others watch her shine in her own right and not as her mother's reflection.
Because Eileen Eicheln (not Diamond's daughter, never anyone else's daughter but Rachel and Edgar's) deserves far more than that.