Festival blog

mothers remembering mothers

Long ago I realised that mothers like myself rarely actually get to decide how we spend mothers day. We (very gratefully) accept good wishes and hopefully enjoy a cup of tea and a long lie. So….every year, on Mothers Day eve, I invite lovely friends who are also mothers and we spend an afternoon or evening together enjoying some good food, good company and good wine. And so it has been for twelve years.

But when several of those people find themselves grieving for a mother themselves and Mother’s Day suddenly becomes a tricky subject, how do we carry on? Well…To Absent Friends offered a way to try getting together and remembering mothers instead of avoiding the issue.

What about, instead of just getting together to share food for the sake of it, we made the food the focus and a way to honour absent friends.

And so a feast was enjoyed and memories shared; of recipes passed on from mother to daughter, of grannys who taught us to bake to feed our families, and of recipes then shared with our own children.

“I always remember that although I bake as a treat, my granny baked to make the most of the little money she had. As a wee girl she taught me her recipes and I'd add a wee bit extra sugar. She used to call me an extravagant wee hinny!”

By Ali Kerr