my month of May

May was always my month. My parents’ anniversary is in May, my birthday is in May, and so is my sister’s birthday and my dad’s… all that Taurus energy (although Dad was a Gemini, he was on the cusp). I waited for May every year. It is my most domestic month:

the author at home, thank you Nancy and Miriam

Ha! As a kindergartener (and in 1st and 2nd grades) at Pearl Harbor Elementary School in Honolulu, Hawaii, I strung flowers on string with my mother, after gathering them from generous neighbors’ yards. We kids brought leis to school on May 1 and danced around the maypole. When we moved to Washington, DC and my dad was stationed at Andrews AFB (a time I write about in Countdown), I couldn’t understand what happened to May Day.

May was always planting month, and it still is, for me. I can’t get it together to plant in April, although I used to start seeds in February, in their little cups, when I lived in Frederick, MD and was busy raising a family, tending a garden, and putting food by.

In those years I experimented with so many ways of knowing and understanding the world and myself. I read and wrote and sent stories to publishers in New York and was rejected a whole lot. I read and wrote more.

At one point I tip-toed through a new-age period. I studied astrology charts, I pulled runes, I read about reincarnation and karma, I consulted the tarot, and for some reason, the most ardent of these pursuits happened in May, when frosts were done and grass was greening and the world seemed to be opening up somehow.

Kinfolks in Mississippi talked about dosing and preparing spring tonics for May consumption, from their foraging and steeping in March, or April. My ongoing fascination with plant medicine and cooking from scratch grew from listening to them talk about a simple life of making do. My mother dosed us kids with castor oil in a giant tablespoon followed by an orange juice chaser. Every spring. Every May.

May was for birthday cakes and canoeing and tent camping and garden seeding and changing out the winter wardrobe for spring clothes and putting away the wool blankets on the bed, closing them into the cedar chest, and exchanging them for the cotton woven ones. New shoes. Haircuts. Plans for summer travels. Preparing for friends to move… or for our own move to the next duty station. Spring cleaning. Rug beating. Opening windows after the fall of the pine pollen. Sweeping the sills. Gathering poke when it’s still very young and cooking the leaves three times. Watching the old perennial garden come back to life with bee balm, mullein, chrysanthemum, Joe Pye, sedum, marshmallow, elderberry (always the elderberry, everywhere), witch hazel, persimmon, on and on.

Not all May memories are easy ones and such is life, eh? On my hardest birthday, I was 20 years old, turning 21, and about to have my second baby. I was alone and homesick. I found a pay phone and called my parents, collect… to wish myself a happy birthday, I guess. All I could think about in that brief moment, with a toddler clutching my leg and suffocating at my feet in this cramped phone booth and the baby in my belly pushing itself against the glass wall, the whole enterprise smelling of stale cigarette smoke and trash, was what I had thought my life would be at 21, and how hard my reality was in that moment.

I hung up the phone, opened the accordion door, picked up my daughter, kissed her hard and said, “Let’s find some ice cream.” We picked up bottles on the side of the road until we had enough of them to collect the deposit, got our money, and then walked to the Dairy Queen and split a vanilla cone. It dripped all over us and I didn’t care — neither did she. Happy birthday. It was good.

I have such a tender spot for that birthday and for those children and that moment and, still, for May.

Skip ahead many years and I was on the road in May with the books I finally learned how to write. They were published and embraced by readers, and I embraced readers right back. I spoke in schools and at conferences, glad for the opportunity to teach and hone my craft, meet my readers, make new friends, renew old friendships. More tender memories. More good years. And this year I am home. So:

I am doubling down on May. Watch out, writing desk. I’m coming for you in a sustained way. I’m also foraging and making: Pine needle tea. Nourishing herbal infusions. Seeds in pots. Watering-in. “We Built a Pond” part two. Studying the moon — did you see that sliver of super moon last night?? It’s in Taurus! Woot! Mercury and Venus retrogrades end.

I still like to pay attention to the galaxy, although I’ve forgotten most of whatever astrology I once knew. I last pulled runes probably 10 or 15 years ago, but I still have my set in its special bag, with its special cloth to set the runes on. I still like to see them on the shelf. They remind me of that me, and those days.

And I still go foraging, mostly in May. Last week I made a savory oatmeal with onions and sweet potatoes and some stinging nettle from a patch in my yard, and it was good! Come visit me and I’ll make you biscuits with butter and apricot jam and we’ll sip on some pine needle tea or — heaven forfend — nettle infusion, lol (I really love it, though). Our inflammation will subside while our cholesterol spikes, hee.

So, Welcome May. Early-early mornings for writing, just like the old days of raising four kids, writing my fingers off, and living a handmade life. Outside before the heat sets in or after the sun starts down, which I can do with long daylight. Once June hits in the South, outdoors will be so much… well, hotter. :> May is perfect. May is for all the good things on my list, the easy things, the hard things, the vanilla cones and the birthday cakes. May is sentimental. Or, I am sentimental about May.

Irene, our screened in porch, just before dawn one day last week.

This week in the Lab we’ll write something sentimental. You’ll see. We’re moving into May (still, hang on to your April notebooks) and we’ll investigate just what sentimental means (not saccharine!), and how we can write about nostalgia and what it gives our writing. If you are absolutely against nostalgia and sentimentality in your writing, come find out what it really means. Pens up, notebooks open, laptops at the ready, we’ll dive in. You can start in with us anytime; now is good. :>

Come write with us!

There’s some sentimentality in these books, even in Kent State, the kind of sentimentality I’ll be talking about in the Lab, and there are huge nuggets, nay swaths, of nostalgia in some of them; and in all of them, you’ll find my love of home, history, and community.

As I say every week, I hope you connect to your own home and place in history when you read and share these books. You can find out more about them at my website, here.

Whether you join us in the Lab or not, write down what sentimental means to you. What does nostalgia mean? Is it a feeling of living in the past? Is it a tug on the heartstrings? Is that bad? Good? Can you open yourself to moments, memories, meaning? Can you write about one moment in time? Here’s how to begin: “The time that ___.”

And here are some links to get you started (all links to YT). Music will play a part in our Lab on Wed. For now, listen to:

“I Love You (for Sentimental Reasons)” sung by Nat King Cole (with lyrics)

“First Day of May” by James Taylor (live)

“Month of May” by Arcade Fire (def not sentimental, or is it?)

“The Month of May” by Kellie Loder

“My Sentimental Friend” by Herman’s Hermits (live)

“What’s Forever For” by Michael Martin Murphey

What other May or sentimental songs (a million of ‘em, I know) can you think of, or do you love?

You can find me all week at Instagram or Notes here at Substack, and always in Chat, or comments on any post. Come say hey.

Have a great week!

xoxo Debbie