On May Day Gifts

This year has been full of odd May Day gift coincidences. I'm a bit baffled by it, so I'm going to tell you about them all.

It started with Julie, when Alex asked her what she was going to do about her May Day gifts. Julie said that she's going to come back next year to give hers out, and that she already knows which one Alex is getting. It's a rainbow suncatcher that I received from Ellen Kreuger, who (I think?) got it from Margot--both lesbians in Deceptive Cadence with me, whom I looked up to rather adoringly as a frosh. Sensing a trend, I passed it on to Sierra, also in Deceptive Cadence with me, who passed it on to Julie, who wants to pass it to Alex. Clearly there's a long-lived cycle of a cappella lesbians, here. I love it... I love being able to trace the path of something that meant so much to me when I received it, and was passed on with a lot of thought on my part.

On May Day, I had several conversations about gifts I had given; once with Kate, another Deceptive Cadence member who was trying to figure out what to do with the DC gift I'd given her (also passed on from upperclasswomen whom I adored, and passed on to Kate with equal adoration). We decided it would have to go to someone in a different a cappella group, now that Deceptive Cadence is no more. The second conversation was with Laura, who said that she still has the gift I gave her, a stuffed animal, and that she hadn't passed it on because it was at her parent's house. I remember choosing stuffed animals for her and for Julia, because they had so many in their room that year, and I loved going there to watch tv and snuggle with people and stuffed animals and pillows.

When perusing pictures from May Day, there were several shots in Ana's albums of various people wearing a suspiciously familiar leopard-print pillbox hat.... And unless there are two of them out there in the world, I'm betting it's the same one I gave to Lilah, which seems to have been passed on within SPT, and is apparently a source of great merriment. ;)

Then just this morning, when reading various people's walls on facebook, I was startled by the most recent comment on Elizabeth's wall--from Melanie, whose name I recognized only because she took a cute picture of Alex and Sarah and I on May Day that I'd just been looking at the night before. The comment was about how cute "Akhmed" was, and how she loved it. For a second I was really, really confused, and then I remembered that I'd given Elizabeth a little fuzzy chick for May Day, and named it Akhmed as an inside joke. I actually only remembered this so easily because just a few days ago Alex was telling me that she'd always thought the little chick was cute when she saw it in Elizabeth's room, and one day looked at it and realized it had been a May Day gift from me.

How strangely circular this all is.... It makes me feel sort of...proud, and happy, that I have this legacy that seems to connect me to so many people. I remember looking at my own May Day gifts, at the names on the tags, some of which I vaguely recognized, and felt warmly about because I felt this strange connection. When I passed them on, I hoped that the warm feelings would continue, and I trusted that the people I passed them to would know I thought of them, and would pass them on to people who had been important in their time at Bryn Mawr. Now it's my name that a few women saw this May Day and maybe recognized, and maybe thought warmly of me, way back in the chain. It's kind of astonishing. I like it. Hooray for May Day, and for passing love along.