Bring Back the May Baskets
“May Day” marked a notable date on my elementary school calendar.
For weeks leading up to May 1, students constructed tissue paper flowers, and crepe-paper-draped “May poles.” Our fingers were coated in sticky pots of paste from overused splintered popsicle sticks to say nothing of our patent leather Mary Janes, now scuffed because of all the dance steps we had practiced.
Dancing around the May Pole was a tradition and I looked forward to it because:
1. It allowed us more PE time
and
2. My mom would sew me a special pastel-colored dress.
Then one day it was announced that we couldn’t celebrate this rite of Spring any longer. It had something to do with Sputnik and Russian rockets and the “drop drills” that had become standard practices to save us from a cold war turning hot.
Honestly, I never understood it and just felt sad that we couldn’t dance and wrangle yellow crepe paper rolls and eat pink cupcakes on May 1. Looking back, I wish they would’ve just kept that as an adult problem, and let the kids be kids who could care less about what the adults were arguing about.
I would’ve still said the Pledge of Allegiance and sung “My Country ‘tis of Thee” happily.
My grandkids look at me sideways when I tell them that when I was their age, I held a paper streamer and pranced around a pole with sweet peas in my hands.
“That’s weird, Nana.”
“That’s fair,” I reply.
But then I tell them another story (I hear them whispering to each other, “Do you think Nana makes this stuff up?”).
It goes like this…
When I was a little girl, every May 1, my sister and I would hang flower-filled paper cones on neighbors’ doors, ring the bell and run. Of course, they always knew it was us - especially the Whipples - but the idea was to deliver joy anonymously.
My sister, Linda, was so much better at it than me. For 64 years…yes, 64 years…she made sure our mom received a flower basket tied onto her front door every May 1. Never missed.
That makes me the little sis to the kindest big sis in the world. Lucky me.
And so I lobby for a simple tradition of kindness to resume:
Bring back the May baskets!