Magnificent May
For most of my life, my heart has skipped a beat in May. I could feel it coming. The sad-happy cliffhanger that marks the close of the school year would roar in like a thunderstorm that had been predicted and prepared for but surprised us just the same. May felt magnificent. Bottomless. Slippery. Simultaneously a thing we’d like to hang on to forever and yet couldn’t wait to give away. May was the month that wrapped us up and spit us out into the world.
It was the bridge between the familiar and everything that lay in waiting—good or bad—on the other side.
As a high school teacher, I loved the final month of school. While these days were filled with research papers, final grades, recommendation letters, and lots and lots of senior itch, they were also more transparent than most other days combined. As graduates on the brink remembered their second-grade teacher who taught them the song about the states or their fifth-grade basketball coach who made them practice once without a ball, they put dots on things that someday they’d connect. As they talked about how scared they were as freshmen, how little they knew as sophomores, and how fast it went once they were seniors, they revealed a composite synthesis typically saved for people twice their age. Something about straddling what was and what was about to be made them unapologetically real for a moment. And accurate. I loved those days of reverie and the mental packing up that went along with them. It was an honor to watch young people try to ready themselves for the windy road ahead.
As one who’d been there, I ached and delighted in part but equal measure for all they did not and could not know.
When May comes bursting in—even through the side door as it did for me this year—I am always reminded of those on the precipice of opportunity that the close of a school year provides. I feel the angst and the anticipation. The question marks and the blank spaces. I feel the crosshairs of it all.
Last week I had lunch with three of my dearest high school friends. It was like going back in time with one of those fancy filters that lives in our iphones. We were all four the best we’ve ever been. And I couldn’t help but think about that May in 1983 when we were chomping at the bit to find our way. We were happy 18-year-olds—wide-eyed, capable, and hopeful. But you couldn’t have told any of us then what we now know. We had to live our way to where we are.
Therein lies the beauty of May. So much is on the horizon. So much that can’t be taught or mapped out by those who’ve “been there” is waiting to be sifted through by those fidgeting at the gate. The distended days are filled with minutes that chase each other around in circles like a game of duck-duck-goose as the month pulsates with fragile, potent air. The kind that’s laced with “maybe.” And with “maybe not.” The kind you hold your breath for and then are scared to breathe.
It's become vogue these days to pose the question to people who have “done things” (whatever that might mean): “What would you tell your 18-year-old self?” The question always makes me laugh. What would I tell myself? A million things I would have never listened to. That’s the trick about growing up. There’s only so much people can tell you. Cliff notes are not necessarily helpful even if we could give them to ourselves. The way to figure out life is to live it. And it rarely, if ever, makes much sense when it’s coming down the pike.
P.S. "It is Not Always May" poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow