I know that I should be gushing love in the run up to Mother’s Day in a fortnight, but instead I’m feeling an amplification of being underappreciated. My mainly teenage offspring are at their most demanding and my life seems to have become a relentless conveyer belt of driving, feeding, laundry, grinds – the list goes on. The early years of childhood hugs are replaced by under-breath grunts. Just a few years ago they hung on my every word – the Gospel according to Mammy was nourishment enough for them. How times have changed !
Last year on Mother’s Day I overheard my youngest son selling space to his two brothers, on his school-made Mother’s Day card – a snip at €2 a signature! As any mother would, I opened the card, making no reference whatsoever to the clandestine deal to which I had been privy, expressed heightened love for them all and oozed with great inner pride at my youngest son’s sense of enterprise.
It goes without adding, therefore, that I won’t be having a cake baked for me this year by my lovely boys. I expect, like the faraway hills, I may have to wait for them to leave the nest before I am fully appreciated.
In the spirit of true maternal resilience, however, I will accept my lot without further complaint, and be grateful instead for the wonderful relationship I have with my own mother, for whom I will be baking this delicious cake this year.
My own feeling is that Mother’s Day really requires a deeper reading – Mothering Sunday being a more literally appropriate title for the sentiment of the day – so why not bake this cake for whoever you are lucky enough to be mothered by – young or old, blood-related or not, there is nothing like a cake to say thank you .
See eunicepower.com
Photograph: Shane O'Neill, aspectphotography.net
Styling: Leona Humphreys, onefineplate.com
