Julia explained that the shirt Margaret was wearing had not been produced by some giant Hollywood merchandise company. Her mother had made the shirts herself, creating roughly two hundred of them by hand and selling them at a crafts fair in Georgia. At the time, Julia was still a struggling actress, trying to build a career before the world knew her name. Her mother was doing whatever she could to support her daughter’s dream, and those shirts had apparently helped raise money for Julia’s early acting expenses. For Margaret, however, the shirt had become something entirely different. She had purchased it decades earlier and never imagined that one day the actress connected to it would recognize it from a television stage.
When Julia walked down toward her, Margaret was suddenly no longer just an audience member. She was holding a piece of history that Julia had not seen in years. Julia reached toward the fabric, visibly emotional, and explained that she could hardly remember the last time she had seen one of those shirts. Her mother had died eight years earlier, and the sight of the faded design seemed to bring an entire chapter of her life rushing back. Margaret then revealed why she had kept it. She had worn the shirt to her daughter’s first day of kindergarten.
