Maytime Musings

It arrives...the merrie month of May. We find ourselves surrounded by sweet springtime and the greenery for which our frozen souls have been longing.

Even the most stay-at-home layabouts appear on the trails and the lawns and the verdant avenues where newly pupated insects begin to buzz. Buds adorn more than beer cans and leaves of bound paper give way to those burgeoning on branches of beeches, briers and bushes.

Life emerges from stasis to rub crusty eyes and once more reveal its Author’s genius. A drive through the countryside harbors no fear of impassible lanes or invisible ice, and friendly regiments of Sta-puft clouds stand at attention on a vermilion parade ground as their brilliant, blazing commander lazily swaggers by.

Threats of April’s forgetful frosts at last lie buried. Bulbs are in the showered ground, seedlings rescued from their hothouse dungeons. Hats on passersby provide decoration rather than defense from the elements.

And I...I want to move about in May. I want to breathe in the pollens and the mown grass and the cookout coal-smoke from neighbors' fires two blocks away. I want to get to know the unleashed animals who go about marking their turf, and the elderly gent on the corner who lost his missus last year. I want to taste snow-cones and hotdogs in their natural habitats again and forget that all this lovely life was ever swallowed by winter.

At long last the atmosphere feels perfect for a night at the drive-in and there’s a new blockbuster being cast on an open-air screen. Outside beckons with its wandering, wayward, wistful, wicked wiles. Possibilities scattered like Hansel’s crumbs, leading my senses out of a dark, lonely wood.

Children used to dance around a pole with streamers. Nowadays they hop about a hoop on the playground with a big orange ball. Or shuck off their spring jackets to hang on bars like monkeys. Pretty soon trucks full of treats will come around chiming their annoying jingles.

I imagine youngsters still get antsy in May...school days seem so much longer when sunshine smiles through the windows and the growl of lawnmowers leaks into their classrooms. I used to wander into daydreams of Roseland amusement park’s opening scant weeks away, and the reward of free rides earned by respectable report card grades. They called it the “Sunshine Special.”

But now that I’m knocking on seniority’s door and Roseland has been paved over by time, I ride the carousel of colors, odors, flavors and cadences created anew every sudden spring...

...by the arrival of merrie May.