May
Of fire, of ribbons full of hopes and dreams, of flowers blooming and light, always the light
"May is the month of expectation, the month of wishes, the month of hope."
Emily Brontë
My days are full of routines that create a familiar and comforting structure and framework to move through the hours. My years feel empty of this though with only Easter, Halloween and Christmas really acting as markers. Time stretches out too far between these events and I miss the periods of having something to look forward to, the moments of celebration and the joy of the quiet space that it creates immediately afterwards. I want more markers, more ritual but also something that is loose enough that I can choose how to celebrate it and make it my own. I want something with a degree of connection to community but not so much that I cannot celebrate quietly by myself. I look to the Celtic wheel, the mysteries of the past so long distant that it can be remade for today. I read of gods and goddesses, of festivals of fertility, life and abundance, of fires to celebrate the return of summer and the power of the sun, of houses decorated with yellow and white spring flowers, of tying ribbons to hawthorne trees, of dancing and the May Queen and the Green Man. Layers of history, imagining, re-imagining, of celebration, connection and community. I pick and choose the parts that call to me most this month, the things I can give my time and energy to, a recognition of the limitation that comes with 30th April / 1st May falling on school/work days. I enjoy planning what I can and cannot do for the event. I enjoy the sense of anticipation without any of the pressure that comes with the bigger events I am used to.
I wanted to share a fraction of this celebration with my children, something that could act as a seasonal touchstone for them, that would be fun and enjoyable capturing their attention for a short time and not needing an explanation that I didn’t really have. I liked the image of ribbons tied to the hawthorne trees and we have plenty that run around the edges of our garden. Yet I didn’t want to buy material - I didn’t want this to turn into something that required expenditure. As the weekend arrived, the rain hammered down on the windows and helped to create a shifting of ideas. Instead of material ribbons, I cut paper into thin strips. We sat and decorated one side of these paper ribbons with all the coloured felt tips the boys have and on the other side we wrote things that we would like to do with our summer. My husband had the idea of creating enough for one thing each weekend through the season and we would pick a ribbon each week and do that activity (with a degree of weather permitting). The boys happily got stuck in and after a short time we had hopes of swimming in the sea, eating ice cream, going for walks and having picnics all captured on our ribbons. I pulled out our wooden tree that we usually use for Easter decorations and we hung all of our paper ribbons on this before sitting it on a windowsill.
“Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.”
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
As the evening of 30 April crept in I lit a large three wick candle in lieu of a fire. For a while I simply sat, feet tucked up beneath me watching the flames as they gently flickered. My mind focused upon their light and movement. This was a pausing. A moment to set aside all of those layers that accumulate day after day and to focus back on the fundamentals and embrace the light around me. My thoughts drifted gently, casting itself back over memories of summers past and the summer to come. Summer is a season that I have always struggled with. The heat and the brightness of the sunshine becomes a long assault on my senses and by the end of August I am counting down the days to the coolness of Autumn. I had read somewhere the suggestion of making a summer moodboard. This wasn’t a moodboard to capture the doing of anything but to capture how I wanted to be in this season ahead. It was a moodboard to capture a feeling. I went into Pinterest with no direction or aim, putting in open search terms and saving down the images that most called to me.
Images from Pinterest
It is so interesting for me to look at this and to see common themes coming from the images. Themes of being outside in nature, of being still and not really doing anything and of everything being light - light clothes, light foods, light natural colours. It will be an interesting experiment to see if this moodpboard helps me navigate this season with a little more ease.
I sat back and watched the clouds drift past outside the window. The sunlight dappled through the leaves of the trees in our front garden, creating shadows that rippled across the chairs. The birds continued to flit and swoop through the evening sky. I watched the sparrowhawk stalk and then hover over something it had spied in the gardens below although what it was I could not tell. The colours around me were rich and deep, the greens stretching from dark green hues up to vivid yellow green. Other trees have deep purple leaves and there are bursts of whites, yellows and blues from the flowers of the moment; forget-me-nots, lilacs, buttercups and wild garlic. Overhead the sky was a brilliant blue with huge fluffy white clouds. I could feel the change in the light, the watery light of winter has long past and the rays of spring are warming and strengthening, inching us forwards to Summer. It continuously strikes me how much colour nature provides to be absorbed and revelled in. There is so much softness in this scenery, not a single hard edge or sudden end but intertwining layers upon intertwining layers.
"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?"
E.M. Forster
The next day I don green; a nod to the ever growing greenery around me. I walk around the garden field during my lunch hour, pushing into each corner and noticing as many of the tiny changes in the plants and trees as I can. As much as I love the idea of decorating the house with flowers, I struggle to pick them from my garden - it feels like such a removal, not just from the space that they occupy but from all of the insects and other creatures that benefit from their presence. I decide to take just one buttercup back inside with me and leave the rest of the clump to bob around in the sunshine. As I sit back at my desk looking down at its tiny petals I think about this small act of celebration. It was not grand or lavish, there was no show or even great ceremony. Really it was quite simple and gentle. It was a few hours of quietness and connection, of pausing and reflecting. It was a few hours of just being and this summer I am here for that.
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
John Lebbock
A lovely reminder of the value of pausing and noticing what is around us, Laura. Great quotations too!