May, Maia, Growth

The Monthly Newsletter (Audio)

An Excursion into May

May is derived from Maia, the Greek goddess of the fields, of fertility, of nursing mothers¹, and of growth. Maia looked after the plants. I think it’s interesting, almost poignant, that so long ago a culture felt the need to designate someone/thing to look after the green things. Of course, there’s the matter of agriculture, but there are the wild plants, too. And the abandoned.

Maia raised Arcas, the child of Zeus and Callisto, after the jealous Hera transformed his mother into a bear. And yet, in Sophocles’ account, Maia left her own son Hermes to the care of Cyllene to nurse and to rear.² ³

I am not a classicist, so I’m curious what Sophocles was signalling about the role of the mother, when the goddess of nursing mothers, sends one of her own children to a wet nurse. Is this a way to degrade maternity? Or is it a way to strengthen community, and women’s role as nurturers, regardless of maternity?

The name Maia has several linguistic relations: an honorific for older women, “midwife”, “ancestors”, and “greater”. She was identified as a “good goddess”, and associated with the earth.⁴

The Greek Tragedian Aeschylus referred to Maia as “the nursing mother”, and gave her the title “Gaia Maia”, or Mother Earth.⁵ She is also one of the Pleiades, the oldest of the seven sisters, the one with the “lively eyes”. ⁶ She was the most beautiful, and the shyest, choosing to live in a cave. At one point in her life, Zeus transformed her (along with her sisters) into a dove.⁷

While the Roman calendar still acknowledges Maia in the naming of the month of May, May was considered an unlucky month. The middle of the month was devoted to appeasing the malevolent spirits of ancestors.⁸ These restless spirits were called lemures, which is likely etymologically related to larvae, which literally means “mask” and implies something disturbing or frightening.⁹

Something whose true identity/purpose is unknown.

It’s beautiful, how when you follow a rabbit hole far enough it will bring you back to your starting point. Or perhaps the more accurate metaphor is discovering the threads that are interwoven with everything we touch.

Lemures. Larvae. Wasps. Yesterday, while I was sitting on the couch and reading, I noticed a wasp circling the light fixture. The first wasp of the year. E. ushered her out the sliding glass door. I think a year ago we both may have reached for the fly swatter.

I was reading an email from an acquaintance—someone I went to college with—who was diagnosed with breast cancer the same time I was. A year ago, almost to the day. I thought of the Brazilian wasp¹⁰, whose venom kills cancer cells. I began thinking about the red bacteria Streptomyces peucetius, and about the yew tree. The evergreen, ancient trees with their red berries. A symbol of immortality and a symbol of doom.¹¹

I am beginning to understand that everything holds its opposite, and that following the middle way simply means acknowledging and attending to them both.

Until today, I had no idea that there were flowers assigned to the months of the year. The practice goes back to the Ancient Romans.

I was born on the cusp of May, and the flowers of my birthday month are the daisy and the sweet pea. The daisy symbolises new beginnings, and the sweet pea, goodbyes.¹² Either flower holds both ideas.

Maia’s flowers are hawthorn and Lilly-of-the-Valley. Hawthorn symbolising hope, and Lily-of-the-Valley, sweetness and purity. But Lily-of-the-Valley is poisonous, and easily mistaken for wild garlic.¹³ And hawthorn, the May Tree, is a pagan symbol of fertility, but bringing a blossom into the house is believed to invite sickness and death.

[I]n medieval times it was said that hawthorn blossom smelled like the Great Plague. Botanists later learned that the chemical trimethylamine in hawthorn blossom is also one of the first chemicals formed in decaying animal tissue, so it is not surprising that hawthorn flowers are associated with death.¹⁴

This morning, I drink my tea and type. Leonard is at my feet, sleeping on the little threadbare rug. It looks older than it is. It was too expensive to be this worn so soon. But it was handmade, and that matters to me. Not in a snobby way, because I have neither the income or the patience to live the way I aspire to—but because sometimes just one, small thing matters more than anyone could know. I actually enjoy seeing the threadbare areas of the rug.

Three dogs have slept on this rug. Two boys turned to men, stepping their wool-socked feet across it morning and evening. It’s not like the rug brings specific memories for me. It’s just a general knowing. It was. It is. It just means: time passes. It’s a memento mori.

It’s not pretty anymore. And sometimes I think that is also its purpose.

In Assam, India there are women are call themselves the hargila army. The hargila, or greater adjutant, is an ugly bird. I don’t believe there is any way around that, even if the woman who runs the army finds them beautiful, talks about their blue eyes. No one is going to convince me these are beautiful birds.

The hargila are a kind of stork. They’re carrion-eaters, with the distinctive bald head and neck that marks scavenger birds. They’re nearly five feet tall, with a wing span of eight feet. During the colonialization of India, British soldiers would feed the birds explosives.¹⁵ Today they are a threatened species. The army of women are doing their best to educate the local population regarding their niche in the ecosystem, and to celebrate the birds. They weave fabric with images of the hargila, and make brightly colored saris from it.

Since learning about the army, I’ve been returning to the image of this fabric, and our valuation of “beauty” with regard to what we deem worth celebrating, and what we want to/dare to associate ourselves with. I’ve been thinking about the wasps that I’ve been reading and writing about for so long now: how seeing one still triggers my body to want to run, or swat; how no matter how closely I look at the details of an antennae, an eye, a mandible, I can’t find a perspective from which to see beauty.

I’m beginning to think this is about humility. My role here isn’t to find beauty. It isn’t even to cultivate a kind of tolerance. It’s to acknowledge, and attend to life. Wasps. Cancer. These god-awful, ugly birds.

We talk about the right and the wrong sides of a knitting project. But that’s all just a matter of appearance. If you pull a thread, everything will unravel. The right and the wrong side. It’s interesting that the wrong side is what we wear next to our skin.

Acts of a Recovering Drama Queen takes its cue from Nature, whose matter-of-fact dramas can be seen from shifting points of view & embracing the paradox of acceptance and hope. ❧ Beetles & Bombs | Poetry & Plays ❧

Published three times a week:
Sunday Shares, Tuesday’s Process Journal Notes, and Thursday’s Poem.

1. https://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/maia.html

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyllene_(nymph)

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia

5. https://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NympheMaia.html

6. Ibid.

7. https://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/maia.html

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maius#:~:text=Maius%20or%20mensis%20Maius%20(May,May%20had%2031%20days.

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemures

10. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150901134941.htm#:~:text=FULL%20STORY-,The%20social%20wasp%20Polybia%20paulista%20protects%20itself%20against%20predators%20by,cells%20without%20harming%20normal%20cells.

11. https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-british-trees/yew/

12. https://www.bloomandwild.com/the-blog/april-birth-flower

13. https://www.helsenorge.no/en/poison-information/planter-og-bar-a-a/how-to-avoid-mistaking-lily-of-the-valley-for-wild-garlic/

14. https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-british-trees/hawthorn/

15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_adjutant