Last night I dreamed of goats. An old acquaintance had sent me a reel on Instagram of a baby goat jumping around as kids will, and it made me instantly nostalgic. I miss the goats I raised when I was a girl. I miss the cold nights spent in the barn every spring, keeping watch over a soon-to-be mother doe. I miss the blood and mess of birth, the first shrill bleat of a newborn kid and it’s mother’s answering hum, the impossible softness of a baby’s newly dried nose and hooves and long silky ears. I felt so alive in the barn on those nights, no matter how late or cold. The horses would watch over the doors of their stalls with prick-eared interest, waiting for the babies to be dried and fed and settled enough for me to carry each kid to them and let the reigning Queen and King of the farm snuffle a greeting to these newest occupants. Nothing quite captures the lustiness of spring like goats, the babies soon bursting with energy and mischief, the does bursting with abundant new milk. As my girls get older my wish for goats, my desire to share with them the experience of raising and milking and laughing at the antics of the babies, gets stronger every spring. Again I sigh and say, maybe next year.
There is something about watching a kid in full frolic. Something like envy. I watch my daughters dance and frolic like kids in spring, and I know that I once did, too. When did I un-learn how to “dance like no one’s watching”? Now, if I don’t know the steps, the proper choreography, I don’t do it. But this week, as I turned to the “May” page in my planner, I found this:
May Moon: Joy
The Flower Moon happens on Friday, the day of Venus, and speaks to the blooms that begin to appear at this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. The combination of Venus’s loving energy and the blossoming of flowers signals a day of ecstatic joy—the headiness of plant fragrance, the relief of the disappearing cold season, and the joy of color appearing everywhere. Yet often in our daily lives, we defer joy. The self-examination for this month: What causes you to hold back on happiness? What does deferring joy get you? This month do not decide “I’ll be happy when…” Look underneath what gives you satisfaction for hidden shame and guilt. Challenge those underlying feelings and work to understand why you have them and why they hold you back from delight. Answer these shadows by picking small victories—even something like getting all your laundry done—and celebrate them. Put on some music you love, and dance if so inclined. Ring a bell. Light a scented candle and take pleasure in the little victories1.
Last year at Beltane I stripped off my plodding, adult decorum and threw myself into May Day celebration. It was our very first time dipping our giddy toes into pagan revelry, and it was a glorious day. I taught the girls to weave flower crowns and we each wore one while hunting for plastic eggs stuffed with strips of colorful cloth, and then while hanging those strips on the trees around our property with a blessing for growth and abundance. The air was light, the sun bright, the girls were delighted by the magic and novelty of it all, and I felt full and held and overflowing with gratitude for this little piece of earth to call home. This year was very different. May 1st dawned cold and rainy, as it had been for days and has continued to be. Putting off the outdoor activities for a later, warmer day, we boiled pots of onion skins, beets, turmeric, and red cabbage on the stove and dyed our own Easter eggs, something I had been intending to do since the spring equinox. When my husband got home, he and I hid the eggs in the house for the girls to find, and then we had a spring treat of lemon ice cream with strawberry rhubarb sauce. It was a pleasant beginning to the season of Maying, if not exactly what I had expected. But, the best things are often unplanned.
And now, here we are: already half way through spring and on our way to the summer solstice and the beginning of the season of decreasing light. I can hardly believe it is already May, even as I am counting down the days to May 7th, the frost date for Ohio for this year, as my tomato plants overgrow the windowsills they have inhabited since March. Friday, the day of the full moon labeled the “Flower Moon” here, is also the cross-quarter day of Beltane2. According to the weather report it should have warmed up and dried out a bit by then, and I’m looking forward to getting outside and enjoying some sun again. As I wait, I am turning this idea of deferred joy over and over in my mind. What is it that holds me back from leaping about like a kid who has just pushed her sibling off the peak of the farmyard “mountain” they were climbing and is very much feeling like the king of the hill? Why do I hesitate to dance to music that makes my feet long to move even if I don’t know “the steps”? Psychologist and researcher, Dr. Brené Brown, says that she “gauges the spiritual health of her family” based on “how often spontaneous dance parties are happening in the kitchen.” This week my husband played “From Now On” from The Greatest Showman soundtrack, our favorite spontaneous dance party song, and everyone was up and dancing in the kitchen for the first time in a long while, and it just felt so good. With the season of Maying starting off slow because of the rain and mud, it is giving me time to think: what brings me bliss? What can I do to encourage absolute abandon in myself in safe and constructive ways? This Beltane, how can I channel my inner goat?
Here’s what I have come up with so far:
Play music that makes my feet tap, or makes me so wistful I want to melt.
Get outside and spend a few minutes with the sun on my face. If there is no sun, light a candle and watch it flicker.
Touch a tree, or the grass. Find something achingly beautiful and spend a few moments just drinking it in. Breathe out, appreciate.
Create something beautiful. Work on a project, write, bake, make a perfect cup of tea or coffee, pick flowers and arrange them, do my hair or the girls’ hair, put on makeup.
Read, alone, just for fun, with a cup of something hot and sweet.
Hug a bunny, my daughters, my husband, a friend, or myself. Hold on for at least 30 seconds. Then do it again.
Take a shower and let the warm water wash over my face, run down my skin. Pay attention to the weight and color of my hair when it’s drenched, then watch it lighten and spring back into curls as it dries. I freaking love my hair. I can own it.
Eat something that makes me close my eyes and moan, even if it’s just a bite. Hold the taste, savor it. Ahhhh.
Play a game that requires me to think, plan, strategize.
Friday will be busy preparing for a very full weekend, but I intend to keep this list in mind that day, and throughout the month. ‘Tis the season to go a little mad, to unleash the crazy and fall ravishingly in love with life. As H. Byron Ballard, author of Seasons of a Magical Life, says:
When you are able to fall in love with the azaleas and give your heart over to the colors and the millions of blossoms, you can set aside worry and fear for a moment as you live in and breathe in the beauty and the life of your azalea kindred. There can be peace there, if only for a moment. And your understanding of the function of those flowers and the pollinators moving through them—things that have nothing to do with you, that go on whether you observe them or not—imparts a sense of wonder that our daily lives often overlook, thinking we don’t need it. Wonder, like enchantment, is an animist’s3 way of embracing our true role in the webs of life. Sometimes we are active participants, sometimes we are observers—all times have value and are sacred. Each of these holy moments brings us one stitch closer to repairing our ragged souls4.
This Beltane, this Maying season, I wish you many wondrous, soul-repairing moments of enchantment and joy. May we move into summer head up and hips swinging, with a little extra spring in our step. I with you joy that will not be deferred.
Rajchel, Diana. “May Moon: Joy.” Llewellyn’s 2023 Witch’s Datebook. Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, MN. 2022.
While Beltane is usually celebrated on May 1st alongside May Day, the true cross-quarter date, the half-way point between the spring equinox and summer solstice, falls on May 5th.
The term “animist” refers to one who believes in animism as a worldview. Wikipedia defines animism (“from Latin: anima meaning 'breath, spirit, life'“) as: “the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—as animated and alive.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism
Ballard, H. Byron. Seasons of a Magical Life: A Pagan Path of Living. Weister Books, Newburyport, MA, 2021.