I Remember Mama

Today is Mother's Day.
Turner Classic Movies is showing I Remember Mama.
Whenever I watch this movie, my initial reaction is "how hokey...some movies just don't hold up over the years."
But I can't quite bring myself to change the chanel.
By the end of the movie I'm crying.

It takes me back to our house with the crooked floors in Oakland, and the house with the big basement in Salt Lake City. My mother loved this movie, and the play it was based on.
She told me that when she was in high school, she had played the title role.
This made perfect sense to me.
She was the perfect person to play Mama.
It's who she was, after all.

I remember sitting on the floor in all those houses while mom did the ironing, and we watched I Remember Mama on TV.
She recited the lines along with Irene Dunne.
I was very impressed that she still knew her lines by heart.
This was years before I thought of doing plays myself.

About 15 years ago I directed a production of I Remember Mama at Arroyo Grande High School. Mom came to see it.
Her mom came, too.

My mother has been dead for over 10 years, but I miss her every day.

Happy Mother's day.