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What do fairy tale stepmothers do on Mother’s Day? Form a support group, of course. Read all about it here:
How are the stepmothers doing today? Let’s check in with them:
Evil Stepmother Support Group ~ One Year Anniversary
Happy Mother’s Day!
May
May Day Celebrations
The fire of the sun
In a spray of bright flowers
Spring turns to Summer
Petals float down from blue skies
Dancing with me in the breeze
May Day A spring holiday celebrated for millennia around the world, usually with flowers, crowning of a May Queen, and dancing around the maypole. Every country or region has its own specific customs.
Beltane An ancient fire festival marking the first day of summer (making Summer Solstice in June “midsummer” – Shakespeare, anyone?). Fires were used to represent the waxing sun and thought to provide protection and abundance for the coming season. The Green Man is often associated with this festival as are fairies and tree spirits.
Lei Day In Hawaii, they celebrate Hawaiian culture and tradition with dancing and the giving of leis (necklaces made of flowers). Each island in this archipelago has its own distinct flower which is used to make the leis.
The May Queen
(an excerpt)
You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow ’ll be the happiest time of all the glad new-year,—
Of all the glad new-year, mother, the maddest, merriest day;
For I ’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I ’m to be Queen o’ the May.
~~~
The honeysuckle round the porch has woven its wavy bowers,
And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers;
And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray;
And I ’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I ’m to be Queen o’ the May.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Wishing you all joy on May Day!
🌸🌸🌸
For You on Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day!
Here…have an apple. Oh, and a lovely little story, too.
Visit Lemon Shark Reef here (yes, right here – just click right here) for some Mother’s Day fun.
Because every mother deserves a comfortable place to complain about her kids. (And things aren’t always as they seem.)
Honoring Short Story Month With a Little Yellow Book
In honor of short story month, I am sharing an excerpt from one of my very favorite short stories of all time.
I wish I could get well faster.
But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!
There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.
I get positively angry at the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breaths didn’t match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.
Brilliant, right? The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a masterpiece. I first read this story in college. Many years later, in a small used book shop, I stumbled upon a small copy from a small press which was printed the year I was born, proving my crazy connection to this story was real.
Now, my little yellow book is a cherished possession, like a worn stuffed teddy bear from childhood.
It completes me.
First published in 1892, the story is available here and, if you have not read it, you really must. I insist.
My Sunday thoughts in 200 words or less.
Lemon Shark 