The sky is thickly overcast, the pond a flat mirror flickering with the bright strips of cloth we are tying to the old pine tree overhanging its bank. This is a Celtic Beltane (Mayday) tradition, the cloth strips or ribbons offered like prayers to the spirits of nature, a request to bless the crops now growing in the fields that they might be fruitful and bring an abundant harvest. It was a day for marriages too, before the men went off to the summer’s raiding. A maiden would be crowned with flowers as the embodiment of the youthful image of the mother goddess. This tradition was adopted by Christianity and it became traditional to adorn statues of the Virgin Mary, another aspect of the Divine Mother figure, with crowns of fresh spring flowers. It is also why Mother’s Day is celebrated in May, and perhaps why expected gifts include flowers and jewelry. Every mother deserves to be a goddess for one day each year.
My daughters and I have been studying the Celts since Rena found out on St. Patrick’s Day that we are part Irish, and she wanted to celebrate May 1st in some of the old ways. Last night we had a cookout and roasted sausages, because fire is sacred to the Celtic people, who marked time according to the sun. Today we hid colored cloth strips in plastic Easter Eggs, it being another tradition to put out hard cooked eggs and milk for the fairies on May Day, and hunted for the eggs so we could tie our ribbons to trees on our property. I have tied a ribbon to each of our fruit trees, and more to this, my favorite old pine tree, where I cut needles for tea all winter. Two wood ducks, male and female, glide away from the tree’s shelter, layering their own images over the mirrored pine they swim through, leaving widening Vs in their wake. The wood ducks come every year and stay for a few weeks before moving on, their silent presence like spring’s own selah. We have returned; life goes on.
I lay my hand against the rough bark of my tree, look up through the needles that are soundless in the still air. With this particular tree I feel a warmth that has nothing to do with temperature, a kinship that has nothing to do with shared experience or blood or communication. Are some things made sacred because we decide to give them that honor? Or can people occasionally detect concentrations of what some might call energy, or divinity, or a spirit? Or is it that I am simply more open to connection than I used to be, and so I experience more connectedness? Or maybe, with a seven-year-old who wants so much to believe in fairies and unicorns and magic, I simply want to believe, too.
My daughter takes my hand. I touch her cheek, the velvet softness like the petals of the flowers I wove into crowns for her and her little sister. Their smiles when I put the crowns on their growing heads lit up the grey sky. Is it not a mother’s job to be a mirror for her children, allowing them to see themselves as beautiful and worthy of love and belonging? With young children especially, a little shared wonder goes a long way towards building connectedness. Today I, like the trees that have fed and healed us, like this good land, have been a good mother.
Bright strips flutter in a sudden breeze, warm and fragrant with damp earth and new life. The soft air touches our faces like a kiss, like gratitude accepted, like love returned. I squeeze my daughter’s hand, and together we watch the wood ducks rise on the breeze, shattering their own doubled images in a gloriously messy splashing of wings.