May Day! May Day!

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Spring is bustin out all over and  even with pollen "crumbs" in my throat (the small price we pay for the magnificent colors) I revel in the May flowers that traditionally follow April showers! When the kiddos were growing up we made baskets out of wallpaper samples and the kids stuffed them with flowers--plucked from my garden, of course. Tradition went like this. They would hang them on the door knob, ring the bell and run. Then I would dutifully answer  the door (many times during the day), exclaim over the beautiful May basket bemused from whence it had come, only to hear giggles in the shrubbery. There, I uncovered the urchins and hugged them to pieces.  And this we repeated until every tulip and dandelion this side of  my neighbors yard had been pinched. This most recent First of May morning, I texted each of my daughters and announced that I was pretty sure I had seen them ring the bell and run. Of course, they each took credit.  Alas, one of them is in India, another flying to Italy at this moment, a third just moved to Wisconsin and Li'l  Sis is finishing up her first year of college. But in my mind's eye, I see them still.

                           

Flowers. With a pitcher full of peonies on the kitchen table and my face planted in the midst of the fragrant blooms, I drink in my childhood. Interestingly, I recently learned that the olfactory sense is the one that most vividly triggers memories. And so quite logically, I am instantly transported to an average house on a quiet street in Small Town, USA where I grew up. I see the back yard with a row of bushes between our house and the neighbors, laden with blooms and the heavy heads of the peonies often drooping to the ground. We gathered them in at this time of year, and plunged them into kitchen containers, not unlike my makeshift arrangement today. Characteristically, black ants would wind their way around unopened buds just as they do today. I pause watching the ants etch a trail of memories.

                          

The fragrance of the peonies and intentional path of those little ants remind me of Mother's Day. I think of the annual Mother-Daughter Banquet held in our church basement. Long  folding tables were slathered in white butcher paper and then pristinely set with church-grade white china and flatware and a paper napkin, sometimes folded into a fancy shape that I would try to remember to recreate at home. There were little favors at each place setting--a tiny basket made of a walnut shell laden with artificial flowers, or a doll fashioned from a nail polish bottle wearing a skirt, or a tiny pot of petunias to be taken home and replanted. And the men of the church would serve the meal. I am thinking it was often ham and scalloped potatoes, green  beans and congealed something. The dessert would probably be a piece of white cake with lemon icing, all very delicious and festive. And then there would be a program, with someone like my own Aunt Christine doing a reading or sharing her collection of antique dolls or antiquated kitchen implements. And sometimes my sisters and I would be asked to recite a poem. My children laugh at my remembrance of most every childhood ditty:

If I could paint with colors bright

I'd paint a face of Mother

If I could sing with golden tones 

I'd sing a song of Mother

If I could mold a head of clay 

I'd mold a head of Mother

But I can't paint

And I can't sing

And I can't mold a single thing

I'll dream a little dream instead

A lovely dream of Mother.

And my daydreaming continues. Mother's Day itself would include our family all decked out in our Sunday finery complete with pancake hats, white gloves and black patent leather Mary Janes. We would go to church where I sat by my grandmother and played with her fox stole, pinching and closing the little guy's mouths that attached to the corresponding critter ahead of him in line as they circled her neck. We would go out to eat, a rare happening,  in a town nearby that was large enough to have a restuarant open on Sunday (another rarity). Then we would tour the gardens of an old mansion open to the public where our pictures were snapped on the old Brownie reflex camera as we tip-toed through the tulips. It seemed to be my parents joy to just watch my sisters and me--their little flowers--cavorting through the acres of springtime blooms.

                            

Flowers. Dandelions. Tulips. Peonies. Yesterday I met a new friend for lunch. Having heard of our May Day adventures of yesteryear, my precious friend crafted for me a beautiful bouquet of roses sporting a pennant that read "May Day! May Day!" We laughed at the play on words ("May Day" the international signal for help) and spoke of the correlation of God's transforming power at work in our lives. We acknowledged that He is there to answer our call for help as we wrangle our way out of the past and embrace what lies ahead. He brings us along to new seasons. Together--sharing the flowers, sharing the fragrance, taking time to smell the roses, we can let go and be transported into a glorious future manifesting the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him...a sweet fragrance of Christ among those who are saved and among those who are perishing.    

                                

                                 Happy Mothers Day memories and merry-making!