Celebrating and Remembering Mothers

Last year the 2020 Booker Prize, the leading award for literary fiction, was awarded to Shuggie Bain (Grove Press, New York, 2020). The author, Douglas Stuart, is a Scottish American now living in Manhattan. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland and grew up with two older siblings in a public housing project. Their mother struggled as an alcoholic and drug addict trying to piece together her own life while keeping her family together. Although the book is not necessarily autobiographical it is inspired by Stuart’s experiences growing up. In the novel the young boy, Shuggie, is trying to understand and protect his mother, while loving her with all of his being. Shuggie Bain is the most powerful and moving novel I have read in the last year.

Douglas Stuart’s mother died when he was sixteen years old. He attended the Scottish College of Textiles and received a graduate degree from the Royal College of Art in London, before moving to New York. For years he had highly successful career in the fashion industry, working for such well-known brands as Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Banana Republic. Shuggie Bain is his first novel.

I mention the book because Sunday is Mother’s Day, a time to celebrate and reflect on mothers and motherhood. Whatever one’s relationship with their mother, difficult, remote, loving, joyful, painful, there is no escape, each of us has been delivered into this world by a woman who becomes our mother.

One day last summer driving through New Hampshire I listened to an episode of” Krista Tippet’s on Being” (New Hampshire Public Radio). She was in conversation with Dario Robledo, an artist, who was discussing his work around memory and loss. It was such a fascinating exchange I have since listened to the episode several times since.

In his work Robledo has focused on memory with the thought that “If you remember, I’ll remember. For it is not a question of if empathy survives within objects and gestures of the past; it a question of if I, if we, are open to acknowledging empathy as a continuum that links us through time and for which we are each responsible for carrying forward.” (from “The Heart’s Knowledge Will Never Die”, published in Designers for Empathy: Perspectives on the Museum Experience, Rowman & Littlefield).

I recently sent an exquisite voile dress, trimmed with lace and hand embroidered flowers to my grandniece. It was a dress my mother made for me when I was almost two years old. I thought of it as a continuum, linking and connecting the past into the future. The love that went into making this dress will not be lost. It remains. A mother to a daughter. A daughter to a grandniece.

On Sunday we celebrate all mothers. Those who are new mothers, those who are in the final years of their lives and those who are no longer with us. We are the ones who feel and understand the connections we have with these women. It is our role to remember, salute and carry forward their memory. Douglas Stuart’s novel Shuggie Bain is a difficult book to read as its sadness penetrates and absorbs the reader. Yet throughout the book we feel Shuggie’s connection and love for his mother.

Happy Mother’s Day. Let us salute these remarkable women and keep their connections with us. “If you remember, I’ll remember. “