ABOUT THE BOOK

Acting is in the doing.
People ought to know that.
Not thinking about it, not talking about it.
Getting up and doing it.
Like life I think to myself.

In a host of ways writing this takes me back to being the sock retriever on the way to the laundry when I was a child—I feel like I’m running after mother who is carrying an overflowing laundry basket. Just when I have an armload of precious errant socks, more drop out and I am so behind. I must pay attention and catch things as they come flying out.

Miss Parsons keeps going, while everyone else around her, including me, is trying to keep up. We exit stage left and I chase after her, she is suddenly in the audience and I jump to sit beside her, there is a costume change that has 30 tiny buttons, and I am buttoning it up quickly—this is how this book will go.

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Miss Margarida’s Way baffled critics. People thought I was making it up as I went along. There were so many audience interruptions but the play itself was the best answer…I never deviated from the script the whole night—I would say something that fit the audience’s response, but it was right from the script.

In this book we go there; where the wild lions live in uncharted territory, to the unknown place. Because there is where my mother has taken me. I used to jokingly tell people that my mother was not born with the mothering/nurturing gene. It wasn’t a joke. Trust me, there will not be more on that later. This is not that type of book.

Because what she supplied me with was something far more important than a feeling of rightness and safety, a soft place to fall family—the things a regular mother is supposed to teach.

What my mother gave me is the maverick spirit.