Mother’s Day Brunch Ideas! | Feast at home

Here are our favourites Mother’s Day brunch ideas to celebrate mom this weekend. Whether she likes sweet or savory, breakfast or a light lunch, we have a wide range of ideas and recipes to spoil her with!

savory eggs

Cute brunch ideas

Spring main courses

Brunch Salads

Desserts Mom Will Love!

Bakery products!

beverages

Mother’s Day gifts

On the Home Front: What we plant will outlive us.

When I was a little girl, my mom planted a small lemon tree after moving into our new home in Southern California. It was 1973. Over the years, the little tree grew and grew, yielding thousands of lemons. Forty years later, when my parents were too old to live in the house, before the sale, my mother asked me to pluck as many lemons from her tree as possible before the new owners moved in. So I went back and picked several grocery bags full of lemons, which she immediately juiced and froze. She thawed the lemon juice as needed and drank lemon water every morning.

And time went by… Fast forward to last spring, Brian and I happened to be visiting Los Angeles, near where I was born, and happened to be Mother’s Day. My mother had passed away a few years earlier. Probably because it was Mother’s Day I started thinking about our old house and that huge old lemon tree and how much I wanted to pick some of its lemons. i missed her

So Brian drove me up the big hill to my old house. He carefully stayed in the car while I walked up the long driveway I’d climbed a thousand times before as a kid. I knocked nervously on the door. It was such a strange feeling knocking on my old door. No Answer. I knocked again and still no answer. I knew someone was home, I could hear them, but they didn’t answer.

I considered just going to the backyard, grab the lemons and run away! And honestly I wanted to do it too, but I knocked again and boldly said: I know you’re in there; I can hear you! Then finally the voice of an older woman: “Who are you?‘ he said gruffly through the door. I explained that I used to live there. “What do you want?“Still gruff. I explained through the door again who I was, as kindly as I could, and after a few more questions and answers through the door, I finally just said angrily, “Look, I’m not going to hurt you, could you just open the door, please?”

It was good that my husband stayed in the car because he would have been too ashamed on my persistence. She hesitantly opened the door and eyed me. There was a small woman in her 80s with an expression on her face that could have killed. I told her again: “I grew up in this house. I’m from Washington and today is Mother’s Day and I’m sorry to bother you I just want a lemon from my mother’s lemon tree. Would that be okay?”

It finally dawned on her. “Did you live here? Your mother planted this tree?” she pointed. “Yes / Yes! “I said. Her eyes changed as she began to conceive.”Come come!” she said as she led me around the house to the tree.

The tree was huge. We stood there for a moment, two strangers just looking up at this tree, now 40 feet tall, fuller hundreds of lemons. I got tears. I could not speak.

When I finally worked up the courage to look at her, I was surprised to find tears in her eyes too. She then told me how much she missed her mother too. And how she had to leave her mother behind in Korea many decades ago.

And in those unfolding moments, we understood each other and felt the loss that all humans eventually feel. Yet in the midst of that sadness, we kept looking up at that amazing tree, as was evident lively it was full of juicy ripe lemons!

It felt like a miracle. As if something of my mother was still alive in that tree. I felt so much joy and so much sadness all together in my heart. There really has to be a word for that.

I took home a bag full of lemons that day and the lady I met, Kris, told me to come back anytime and visit her and my mother’s lemon tree.

xoxo

Sylvia

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