It’s still pleasant enough at the moment in Texas - the heat hasn’t invaded us yet - but for me there was no time quite like May and June in the beautiful Litchfield Hills seventy years ago, when it was woodlands interspersed with farms anchoring the rolling landscape.
From the time I can remember I had farm chores to do. Even the youngest children had calves to feed, eggs to gather, and by the time I was ten years old the job of milking some of the cows could be entrusted to me.
In the summer there were always hay fields beckoning. The first cutting came in late spring/early summer, then the better hay from the second cutting in the height of summer, and if conditions were right there could be a third cutting in late summer/early fall.
Of course, it wasn’t all work. I had a couple of hundred acres of woods and fields in which to wander and explore, and throughout the woods there were springs which fed a beautiful little brook which cut through the farm.
It was that stream of water which nourished my imagination, and I could trace it on a map which showed it flowing into the Nepaug River, then joining the Farmington River which fed into the mighty Connecticut River, eventually emptying into Long Island Sound and out into the ocean.
I spent countless hours playing in that little brook, especially when the month of May started to give way to June, with the banks of the stream covered with the purple blooms of water irises. I would set small sticks of wood afloat, and then picture them eventually finding their way out into the ocean itself. I doubt any of them made it that far, but in my imagination they did.
It was there, in that little stream, as a little boy, that I had the earliest of what might be called my first “theological thoughts.” The marvel of water coming endlessly from upstream gave me a beginning of the concept of the generosity of God and the vastness of His creation. The thought of the water that I had just touched then moving downstream, into the ocean itself, made me wonder what lay beyond the portion of God’s world which I knew so well.
Anyway, that’s what comes to my mind as we get into the month of May. Yes, certainly it's Mary's month, but I'm sure the Blessed Mother is patient enough to endure my happy childhood memories!