I wish I had danced around a Maypole with my mother. I’m not sure why it didn’t happen at least once in her 101 years. At the very least, I wish I had told her I wanted to.
“Mom let’s celebrate my birthday month with a Maypole.”
In her final days, even when her reality grew sketchy, a flicker of fancy softened into a smile when she revisited her Maypole memories.
This year, I had planned to continue my mother’s legacy. I researched venues that held Maypole dances. Maybe I would be the only grandma dancing. Adventure beckoned. It actually arrived, just not in the form I had expected.
“I’m really sorry we can’t go to the Maypole celebration,” my injured daughter said as she rested her crutches on the deck railing and angled her way into a lounge chair. Her recent collision with a cement sidewalk that left her temporarily immobile, had earned her a guest spot back in the house where she grew up.
“Come get some fresh air,” Sara called into my office that opens onto the deck. “It will give you a new perspective.”
The girl knows her stuff. A few minutes after I stepped onto the deck, it hit me that one of my daughter’s crutches could be transformed into a Maypole.
Soon the crutch had been placed into a large glass vase and anchored with towels.
Ribbons were wound and ribbons were tied. Purple bougainvillea, clipped from the bush that climbs the backyard fence, was tucked and taped. The lemon tree, pregnant with large round fruit, bowed into a backdrop. And there it was, a Maypole that put me in mind of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, spare but special.
I will grab a ribbon and take a few turns around May. Although Sara can’t join me, especially now that I have absconded with one of her crutches, at least she will be there for her mom’s first Maypole dance. And who knows? Maybe my mother will be watching from somewhere.
Maybe even George will put in an appearance on the deck he built for our mid-May wedding. Perhaps we will dance like we did on the beach where we honeymooned. The place we returned to 25 years later to quietly renew our wedding wows under a moon sculpted into an opening rosebud.
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Or maybe I will just dance with the memories, a smile flickering across my face like it did on my mother’s when she talked about the Maypole.
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