Someday, this will come back around to me...

We set up the stage Sunday night.  (When I say "we", I mean I held things while other people screwed them together.) 

Last night was final dress rehearsal.
While waiting for my cue backstage alone in the dark, I had a very special moment...

***

One or two weeks earlier during an exhausting rehearsal, I sat off to the side trying to stay out of everyone's way. I leaned my head on some boards to rest.

Let me explain that a little better...
This particular theater group has a workshop in an old municipal building where they paint and store scenery, props, and costumes.  The entire place is a storage room.  Furniture is shoved into every corner leaving nothing more than a walkway through rooms.  Props are balanced on all available flat surfaces.  Costumes have their own room; maneuvering through it is like experiencing birth.  In the stage area, scrap wood and planks are stacked to the ceiling along one wall, and rows of flats (tall sections of scenery that get painted and assembled as background) lean up along the length of another wall.
For Harry Potter fans, imagine the Room of Requirement when Harry needed to hide things in it.

So, for me to find a place to sit was amazing in itself.
And, this is why, when I rested my weary head, it ended up leaned up against the 2x4 of a flat.

As I sat there with my eyes closed, I very clearly felt my mother leaning her head back against mine.
It was nice.
And very odd.
Because there was no reason for her to be there.

She had no connection to this theater group.
None to this building.
She had never been a "stage mom".  Never painted scenery.  Had never sewn a costume for me.
While I know she had come to all my grade school performances (because I needed a ride), the only show I remember her attending was the one she and Lily came to in high school.

There was no reason for me to feel her presence there at the workshop.
But, I did.

I sat up and took a good look at the boards I'd been leaning on.
There was nothing special about them.
Someone had written, "Jennifer was here".
Another had made a dark X above the words "marks the spot".

It made me think of how I once had scribbled my name on a shelf at college and wondered if anyone would find it.
These two theater people probably wondered the same thing when they'd left their marks.
I pulled out my pen and etched Mom's initials into the wood where my forehead had been.  It was just above a seam where two boards were nailed together.
And then, just so she wouldn't feel left out, I added Lily's initials, too.
I imagined whoever found them long in the future might think the six box letters were assembly instructions.
And I thought, "Someday, this will come back around to me..."

***

Last night during dress rehearsal, I stood backstage alone in the dark waiting for my cue.
We have a small cast of nine people, and I am the last one to go onstage. One by one they go until it's just me backstage.
(For you Harry Potter fans, it's very much like the Goblet of Fire when Harry is alone in the tent waiting to face his dragon.)

Staring at the door through which I would enter, I noticed off to the side of it a dark X on the 2x4 frame.
Really.

A little below it, I could just make out a scribble that could have been Jennifer's note.

And just above the seam where two boards were nailed together, six box letters.

There they were.
Waiting with me.

I had not expected it to come back around to me so soon.