I’ll get to you in a minute. But please read on.

In the car on road trip through Mali, L1 and L2 talk about where their families descended from. Small talk ensues. Then…
J: I don’t really know anything about where I’m from.
L2 (gasp!): How could you not know your heritage?

Shocking! How could she not know? We live in an age where National Geographic’s Genographic Project will take anyone’s DNA and trace it back to Mesopotamia! An age where over 2 million microfiche and microfilms of genealogically relevant material are housed in—you guessed it—Salt Lake City! An age of Genealogy computer software and hundreds of Hereditary and Lineage organizations at our service!

Wasn’t every 5th grader was subjected to the same report about their heritage? I have vivid memories of being bored out of my mind on presentation day when I heard 22 versions of crossing on the Mayflower or living in a teepee. I was a teepee person. One-sixteenth, thank you very much. Yes, I know where one-sixteenth of me came from.

But all of these genetic thoughts didn’t start with J’s blasphemous comment. It was tonight’s scene with roommate-brother and S at Asian restaurant…
S: Cory, you have really white teeth.
C (smiles)
A: And really big lips. Where did those come from?

They are NOT part of our family tree.

So, Milkman. Can you explain some of the 15/16ths that are unaccounted for?

It would have made for a more interesting presentation for his classmates.

On his identity-confused behalf,

Amber

Come in, come in! Get out of the rain and sit for a spell, dear friend.

It’s no secret, May. You are my favorite month. Most people think I favor you because you have the privilege of hosting my birthday. (Everyone’s favorite month is their birthday month, right?) But you mean so much more to me, beloved May. You always have.

One Sunday morning in May, I woke up before my mother—which had happened only one other time (post-infancy) when I got up at exactly 5:30 to participate in our first garage sale. Armed with price stickers and my moneybox, I waited by the garage door for my parents until 6:00. However, this time I was rising before dawn to make my mother coffee. It was Mother’s Day, and I was too old to make another Coupon Book of Free Chores yet too young to buy her perfume from the mall. So her usual cup of coffee—prepared by her favorite daughter—would have to suffice. Inexperienced in the ways of coffee making, I called my Mimi. Mimi and Papa boasted as many coffee cups as they did trucker hats. And mysteriously to me, they took their second pot in the afternoon? Groggy but ever the picturesque grandma, Mimi congratulated my aspiring coffee connoisseurship and guided me through each step until the kitchen’s scent was so perfect I was certain Mom would catch a whiff and jump out of bed singing, “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”

In e-mailing with Mom today to see what she remembers of that particular Mother’s Day (I’ve pulled off so many spectacular ones, I wasn’t sure if she’d recall the Year of the World’s Best Coffee), she wrote, “It was good!!” That’s right, two exclamations points.

It’s been well over twelve years, and I haven’t made my dear mother a cup of coffee since that Sunday. Even so, there have been many popsicle stick picture frames, silk flower corsages—one that is still worn annually—and other random macaroni knickknacks that embody all things Mom…and all things May.

The month of May also hands every hard working student a gift of a single day when they must go to school, but they don’t really do school. As elementary kids it was Track and Field Day or Super Kids Day as my school called it. You spent the entire day outside playing games, eating Blue Bell vanilla ice cream with a wooden bowtie stick, and watching a movie if you were lucky.

In middle school it was Yearbook Signing Day. Lining up alphabetically by last name as the yearbook staff frantically unloaded box after box of yearbooks, you were soon filling in autograph pages with long letters to your BFF’s, and to the less familiar, cute pleasantries like What a Year!!! and Stay Sweet

High school’s blow off day was more like an entire week, appropriately named Dead Week, as we crammed for finals, interviewed for summer jobs, and said goodbyes all in a zombie-like trance. And then May delivered the ultimate gift: the cap and gown, the walk across the stage, the diploma (which will be mailed to you pending the return of the books you still owe the library), and the melancholy appreciation that you made it to the end. It also hits you that May will never again hand you a day that feels like that…at least not for another 4 years.

It’s not just what you give me, May. It’s what you symbolize. As a teacher-for-life, I’ll always know you as the one month that draws another long school year to a close and opens up another hopeful summer. You aren’t complete without several viewings of Dirty Dancing followed by dreams of summer romance. You usher in a season of driving with the windows down, working in the flowerbed, shopping for shorts and tank tops and flip-flops. Pedicures, pool parties, and proms. You entertain pastel weddings, Memorial Day trips to the lake, and evening baseball games. The Siloam Springs Dogwood Festival and Broken Arrow Rooster Days. And for me, an especially fabulous festivity. Cake and party hats required.

If your remaining 29 days are at all like your first two…a lazy Labor Day at a hotel pool, eating up another volume of Christy Miller with a side order of the Rabelais’s finest chocolate ice cream, teaching the final chapters of Mockingbird—anxiously watching their faces as Boo comes into the light, reading Japanese folktales with very silly 6th grade boys, baking chocolate-chocolate-chip cookies while browsing registries for this summer’s weddings, and a little bit of letter writing before bed…Ah, then May, I invite you to make yourself at home. Your company is always quite welcome. And it’s about time you showed up.

Fondly,

Amber