On seeing Maureen in the green room

We are preparing to shoot a scene of Survival of the Fittest where Daughter and Father argue over how to care for Mother.  I chug up the stairs leading to the actors’ greenroom.  Maureen Hawkins, who plays my mother demented at 85, vital at 60, and dead, all in under 10 minutes of screen time, has already been to makeup so her hair is grey and she’s dressed.  But she’s not yet in character.  She stands, as actors often do, with a “is this what you had in mind?” presentation of herself as I top the stairs.

For an instant I am caught unprepared and (allow myself to?) perceive Maureen to be my mother, Donna: strong and vibrant and loving as she was for most of her life.   Memory returns of such a woman, my mother, memory somewhat vanquished and submerged by the hard end of her.

I see how this crazy, entangled and protracted film project is an act of re-membering created in some part by my desire, my wish to hold and have my mother whole again.  And this brief and magical incarnation by Maureen is her gift to my remembering – the treasured talent of actors, their ability to embody.  And so this passing moment of conspiracy with Maureen allows me the fleeting being of daughterhood, again.  One last time.

I am filled with a joy that lingers even as the perception corrects and the presence of this wonderful actress and our job to do together settle into the real.  And the day presses on.