Here is a tear-jerker that earns its tears.

''A Time to Remember,'' Sunday night on the Hallmark Channel, is the story of an estranged mother and daughter who need to put aside years of grievances before Alzheimer's disease erases the mother's memory and any chance for a reconciliation. On the surface this looks like your average made-for-TV movie. No one would mistake it for real life.

But as it begins to reveal a heart thumping beneath its pretty vistas and tasteful interiors, as it makes its modest points about the vitality of family bonds, the drama hits you where you live. Or maybe where you used to live. You can go home again, this movie tells you, if you have the guts.

Dana Delany is the daughter, Britt, who fled her family's sprawling homestead to become a struggling artist in the city. She is rearing her baby, Harry, on her own, even though the baby's father, Nicholas (Robert Bauer), is devoted to Britt and Harry and wants them to be, yes, a family.

Doris Roberts is the mother, Maggie, a wealthy widow who is trying to hold onto her dignity. This effort is aided by Britt's uptight sister, Valetta (Megan Gallagher), who still lives near mom, and by Maggie's salt-of-the-earth sister-in-law, Billy (Louise Fletcher), an unfailing source of good-humored wisdom.

Without revealing their mother's emerging senility, Valetta summons Britt home for Thanksgiving. Britt takes Harry to meet her family and finds Valetta commanding a team of gardeners on their mother's grounds. When Britt says the trees and shrubs look fine, her sister scowls and replies, ''That's because you don't know what you're talking about.''

Mom isn't much friendlier, showing little warmth to Britt or the baby. But wise Billy is determined to guide Maggie and Britt to each other.

Billy tells Maggie, ''If two old bags like us can get along, you can find a way to get along with your daughter.''

Subtle? Like a jackhammer, and just about as surprising. But as the story unfolds, it grows beyond the limitations of the form, aided by flesh-and-blood performances from the principals. Ms. Roberts, familiar as a dotty sitcom mom, and Ms. Fletcher, indelibly associated with the role of Nurse Ratched, play against expectations. Their tough but vulnerable old bags have believable substance. Ms. Delany has drawn a tougher assignment. If she can't quite make you accept Britt's required transformation from angry loner to a font of love, she makes you wish that life were a little more like television.

''A Time to Remember,'' directed by John Putch from a script by William Sims Myers, does have its share of on-screen crying. If you shed a tear or two yourself, think of it as therapeutic, like a massage. You've been manipulated by professionals.