May I Have This Maypole Dance?

It's May Day or Beltane and I don't have a Maypole. Does anyone do that any more? I remember doing a Maypole dance when I was a little girl. I finally was allowed to wear the pretty yellow dress I got as a flower girl at my uncle Ross' wedding and I had ringlets and daisies in my hair. The yellow dress was long and twirly and shiny and satiny, and I felt like a princess. May Day was a liberating joyous day when I could let my inner girly girl out and carry around baskets full of flowers.

Shortly after the days of that yellow dress, all my girly tendencies were carefully hidden away and I was recreated into a pseudo tom boy. It was foreign territory to me. I still wanted to wear dresses and lace and ribbons, but at my school it was very uncool to wear a skirt. It hadn't been many years since girls were forced to wear dresses to school and we were all reveling in the new-found freedom of looking exactly like the boys. My mom still wanted me to go to school with my long blonde hair in perfect ringlets, but the girly girls were considered freaky and I had to play kickball just to try to fit in. So, I tied up the curls my mom had spent hours carefully arranging and pretended I thought dolls were stupid and playing house was downright boring. I ran around and tried to keep up with the boys and not even look at the flowers.

It look me many years to embrace that girl again. Mostly because I am tall for a girl (kinda tall even for a guy), I played volleyball and showed up at track and pretended to be that tom boy I was supposed to be. Now I just wish I had that yellow dress in my size and some pretty daisies for my hair. Oh, and a Maypole with cute boys to dance with.

P.S. Happy birthday to my friend Bonnie who is the real Queen of the May.