Birth Day Day For My May

I was out in the little garden area by the kitchen porch yesterday evening, getting some oregano and basil for what the triggerfish recipe I was using called "blistered tomato bruschetta" which is served atop the pan-seared fish when I suddenly noticed the gardenia you see in that picture. 
I literally and actually and truly gasped for perhaps the very first time in my life. I knew I had buds on the bush but suddenly, before my very eyes, one had opened. I was so happy! 

Rather Georgia O'Keeffe-like, don't you think? 
I put my nose in it and took a deep inhale. 
Yes. Gardenia. 
Now I've been saying that this would be the first year that bush ever bloomed but after doing a quick search of the blog, I see that it did indeed give me a blossom on July 4, 2023. 
Strange (and a little scary) that I didn't remember that but it's also strange that it bloomed in July and here this one is, blooming in May, which I see from the University of Florida Gardening Solutions website via the all-knowing Google, is the normal time for gardenias here to start blooming. Late May, early June, and then possibly on into the summer. 

I will be totally happy if it gives me even a few weeks of flowers. 
Here's a story I told on the post about that July gardenia: 

"When we lived in Winter Haven, when I was in high school, we had a huge gardenia bush in the yard that bloomed so prolifically. Every day I would pick one blossom and take it to school with me and give it to a friend of mine. I loved this boy tremendously, although not in a boyfriend way. And yet, somehow, it was incredibly romantic. And every day, he would carry that gardenia around with him so carefully that at the end of the day, it would be as white and perfect as it had been when I gave it to him. And gardenias are the most delicate of blooms. When he signed my yearbook, he said, "Thanks for all the gardenias."

And I truly believe that story is the reason I love gardenias so much. They remind me of that boy and how sweet he was, how delicately and carefully he carried that gardenia around with him all day long, never bruising it in the least. 
That was a gentle-man. 

So. I may have forgotten that gardenia bloom from three years ago but you know what I will never, ever forget? 
The morning my May Ellen was born. 

I have been writing about May's birth and about May herself for so many years, especially on her birthday. She was born at home, which at that time was a ten by fifty foot trailer a few miles down the road from where I am now. 
Here's a link to a post I wrote three years ago on her birthday.

There are plenty more of her birth stories woven into the tapestry of Blessourhearts. As there are of all of my children's birth stories. And grandchildren's birth stories. 
There's nothing I love more than a good birth story and I've been so incredibly fortunate to have been at quite a few good births, my own included although one of the very best things about being old is knowing that I will never, ever go through labor again. 
Still, I have not-infrequent dreams that I am pregnant and completely freaked out at the idea of having a baby at my age. Childbirth has been, without a doubt, the most profound experience of my life and it is no mystery as to why I would dream that. 

But today, it's May's story I am remembering and the way she was born just as the sun was coming up, how surrounded by love I was, how I felt when the midwives left me with clean sheets on the bed and me cozy in my clean nightgown, the house tidy, the laundry in the washer, this fresh new soul on my breast, in my arms, and having just been taught by that very baby that love is boundless. 
That there are no boundaries to it. 
And with every childbirth I've experienced, I felt the true meaning of rebirth, in that not only had I given birth, but that in doing so, I was instantly becoming an entirely different person, a mother to a human being who had never taken breath on this planet until that new life had been pushed out of my body. 
I would apologize for what probably sounds completely hyperbolic but for me, it isn't. And I am so grateful that I experienced that with each of my children. I don't think all mothers do and I'm not sure why I did. I have theories. 
I shall not go into them now but you know damn well that I have theories. 
Also, I'm just so very lucky. 

Here's one of my favorite pictures of May.

She is a pure glory, that one. I am so fortunate to have known her all her years, to be the mother of such a soul. 
She is light and she is love and she is the one and only May. 

I've posted this picture so many times and I have no idea when it was taken but it was a Christmas day at least fifteen years ago. I still had a younger woman's hair, a younger woman's face, which I no longer do although I still have the coat. 

But May? She has seemingly not changed at all. Her beauty is internal, external, eternal, and true. 

May, thank you for coming to me, even if it meant being born in an old, tiny trailer. You could not have been loved more if you'd been born in the Sistine Chapel. 

And even there, you would have out-shown the golden ceilings. 

And you still would. 

All The Love...Mama