"It was the month of May, the month when the foliage of herbs and trees is most freshly green, when buds ripened and blossoms appear in their fragrance and loveliness. And the month when lovers, subject to the same force which reawakens the plants, feel their hearts open again, recall past trysts and past vows, and moments of tenderness, and yearn for a renewal of the magical awareness which is love." (Sir Thomas Malory, 'La Morte d' Arthur')
Muguet, Lily of the Valley, is the flower of May Day. It has always been one of my favorites. Its scent is heavenly. I can remember giving my mother Coty's Muguet des Bois cologne for Mother's Day one year. She loved the scent, too.
May is such a busy month with Mother's Day, graduations and in our family birthdays and anniversaries. When I learned I was to have a baby due on Mother's Day in 1969, I was very happy. In those days you didn't know ahead of time whether you were having a boy or girl. I wanted a boy. I got a girl.
Kari, pictured with her Great-grandmother Mary Schulte Underberg (Aug. 20, 1883-Jan. 9, 1974), waited until the last day of May to make her appearance. Great-grandma Underberg also had a May baby, Kari & Preston's Grandmother Clara Anna Underberg Fleming (May 4, 1918-Sept. 4, 2007).
"Who first beholds the light of day in Spring's sweet flowery month of May, and wears an emerald all her life, shall be a loved and happy wife." (Anon.)
I don't remember my Grandmother wearing emeralds, but she was also a May baby - Delphia Verda Means Ridnour (May 10, 1896-Aug. 15, 1991)
Other female family members with birthdays this month are my granddaughter-in-law, April James on May 2 (twenty-one this year), my sister-in-law Susan on May 29 (she does wear emeralds) and my grand-niece, Keira Calise Lynam who will be one on May 31.
As did I when I married Preston & Kari's dad, Dennis, on May 11, 1968. "Marry in the month of May, and you'll surely rue the day." (We also divorced in May.)
Other May birthdays include my grandson, Brock Garrett, May 23, 1981
---shown here with Great Grandparents, Betty and Chuck Botkin.
Coincidentally, Bud and I both had fathers who were born in May and died in May. Bud's father, LaVerne Dean (Jocko) Schaffer, Sr. was born May 10, 1922 and died the day before his birthday in 1979.
My father, Louis Lavern Lynam was born May 6, 1917 and died May 24, 1978.
There was one other birth and death in our family in May, 1923:
Dad's little sister, Evelyn Lois Lynam, born May 8, two days after his sixth birthday and died four days later.
"Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date."
(Shakespeare; Sonnet XVIII)
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