May is here again. This is the true end of the year. May is supposed to be spring but it’s actually harvest season. We see what has survived and what has grown. We cull what we can. We return year after year to witness the fact that time has continued to move.
Every year I’m surprised, although I own and use a calendar. Several, in fact. Still, I’m flattened by the rush of endings and the gatherings stacked atop one another. Cut off one celebration and two grow back in its place, fastening ever more ceremonies around your neck like beautiful cursed jewelry.
May gathers up loose threads with brassy pomp and circumstance before summer upheaval arrives with its wet bathing suits.
May is a complete disaster, is what I’m saying. Just look at the inside of my car if you need proof. My Toyota is a rolling evidence locker. A midden heap.
The rest of you, though? You look great. Hydrated and moisturized while you’re winding down, as it were. I salute you. May your linen pants remain crisp and your drinks be as lemon-wedged as you wish.
Me? I’m choking down noises that sound like a 1987 Buick trying to merge while going uphill.
I’m not cute enough to be winding down. May is about endings. Lasts and finals. All I can do is listen to one of my sons tell me that by the time he leaves for college, 90% of our time together is done. I’m not checking that math, thanks, because I’m busy remembering carrying him in after he fell asleep in the car, all dead weight and impossible trust
At night I collapse onto the couch so dramatically that heretofore missing objects launch out of my bra upon impact. Bobby pins, receipts, Cheez-Its, Chapsticks with missing caps. I am not proud of this, but leave it here for future historians who may appreciate the data.
I almost just typed, “Still, I love this time of year.” But I don’t. I mean, I recognize the ache of it, even if it knocks the wind out of me. I recognize that sense of subjective slow motion when something is ending. I recognize that my children have become themselves gradually, then all at once. That they have developed complex, glorious, kind lives, and I get to celebrate and make banana bread for them. No-reason banana bread. All-the-reasons banana bread.
Mostly though, it’s because I’m overbuying bananas these days. They darken as we rush to and from events. I always think we’re a household that will eat many bananas. We are not. We are a household that transforms bananas via neglect into baked goods.
We recently played Jackbox as a family. The prompt was “What is the name of a horse you wouldn’t bet on?” I answered “Last Place Monty,” which got me an appreciative snort from the kids, a noise I will cherish, to some extent. One child answered, “Beefs Wellington.” That won. The next day he wandered into the kitchen and lamented, “I should have gone with ‘Thelonius Glue, Sr.’”
There are entire sections of motherhood no one adequately explains beforehand, including the fact that one day your children may become funnier than you, and that you will feel a piercing gratitude for that.
Every week I begin my planning journal by writing “Do not waste your precious timing giving a single crap about what anyone thinks of you.” This is excellent advice that is fundamentally incompatible with motherhood. There are a few people whose opinions matter to me. My husband. My kids. The dog who watches all of us in case we sneeze weirdly and he needs to retreat. The cashier who sells me bananas when he absolutely should know better at this point.
Loving these people (not the cashier. Ok, maybe the cashier. Hey, Jerry.) requires presence, vigilance, mood-monitoring, remembering who needs new shoes and what size, and who suddenly likes bananas again.
And every May, no matter how tired we are or what strange treasures are embedded in my underthings or in the Toyota’s backseat, we all somehow find our way home. Banana bread. Better versions of jokes. It’s some holy version of “WTF.”
Jackie Pick 