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| Blossoming Catherine Meyers
At a point in between one phase of a project, in this case a book, and the next, in this case the edit and revision stage, there is a lull. A time to stretch my legs, air out the house, clear my mind, desk, and calendar, and a time to take stock. As part of this in between time, I continue to write and today my reflections on May, seem to have streamed out of a place, a place alive within me, that is bursting forth. Each step I take, each breath, each turning of the clock, and each incoming and going out of the tides, reminds me, of Life.
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May is a month for remembering. For centuries May was the month when the Ancient Greeks revered Artemis, the Goddess of fecundity. The Ancient Romans honored Flora, the Goddess of Blooms and Blossoms. Traditionally in many cultures, May is the time for the start of new growth. Today, with the New Moon in Taurus, we are at the threshold of another new beginning.
For those of us who honor the Blessed Mother, May is the Month of Mary. Sometimes called the Lady Month, it is a time when special devotions are done to honor the place of Mary as a light and model for all women. It is also a time to revered those whom we have lost; a time of remembrance and reverance to the special place those people held in our lives while they were living. This weekend marks the anniversary date of my Father's death. This year it falls on Mother's Day.
During the Lady Month, we crown and celebrate the beauty, grace, and strength within each of us...that light and energy that we share in common with all women and with those special women who have set for us an example of what we can be, what we can bear, and what we can overcome and thrive beyond. The month of Mary is not about worshipping goddesses or venerating vestal virgins, at least not for me. For me it is a time when I celebrate life and being alive. Being a living, breathing, growing, aging, and ripening part of humanity that is bursting into blossom like some Tulip Tree or Magnolia. Big, fragrant, dipped in honey blossoms.
It's about breathing in and out, the fresh air, the salty sea spray, the rich fragrances of roses, the pungent smell of day lilies, or the swampy, boggy odor of the camas, willows, and grasses growing on the riverbed. It's about the sweaty smells of joggers running for their lives along the riverwalk, or the bundled up children running barefoot at the waterline along the beach. It's the river's ebbing tidal pull and they muddy, silty riverbottom's odors and patterns and temporary revelations that speak to me of May and remembering.
May is about dressing up in lighter, frillier, and more pastel shades and fashons, and about letting our hair down, and smiling more and feeling lighter and less burdened down if for no other reason than we're wearing fewer clothes. Bare feet, bare arms, skinny dipping in frigid streams, and toes turning blue in the arctic, icy waters of the Zig Zag, its streams nothing more than freshly melted ice off W'east. Gentle breezes. Longer days, stretching well into the purple sunsets that blaze like fire in the sky at day's end. Bodies stretching out of their introverted modes to emerge into the sunlight and play with others dancing along the path of life, laughter, and the endless search for be-ing.
May is the month for remembering the gifts of being women. And it is also a time to remember our needs as women to share our lives with the men in our lives who celebrate and honor life in the same direction. Time to throw off the capes that we use to hide or protect ourselves from living. Time to walk, dance, swim, sing, propel ourselves beyond the edges of normalcy into the stream and flow of Life's great river. Flowing in the channel, across the bar, into the open Sea, and out onto the highways of new adventures, new chapters, and new beginnings. Equipped with the past's lessons learned, and fortified with the graces that allow us to be free, it is time to celebrate Life as we find it, and let ourselves once more simply be.
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