May in summer

The day she was born had been marked by a long-awaited rainfall. May knew this as it was her dad’s favourite story to tell at dinner parties and to any friend that came over to hang out or sleep over. It wasn’t the rain that made him tell it, it was what followed the rain.

“It was an incredibly hot day in August.” He would begin to recount dramatically to anyone finding themselves captive out of politeness or simply the incapacity of leaving. 

I’ll spare you the details of the story and provide a summary. It was a very hot August (as was stated), it started to rain right as her mother’s water broke and it continued to rain for three days following the birth. My father loved to add that the labour lasted 10 hours and pair it with a grimace as if it was him who went through labour, despite the fact he passed out in the first 10 minutes and had to be treated elsewhere in the hospital. 

Now, before her mother and father knew she was about to be born, they had an entirely different worry occupying their mind : their garden, which was their prized possession since they moved to the family house, was dying due to a drought. The garden was there through their struggles and successes, their highs and lows- They celebrated her father getting a promotion by planting potatoes and subsequently helped irrigate their new petunias when he was fired 2 years later. All things considered, it was their their first child. And while May was entering the final leg of her race to see the light of this world, their unofficial first child was dying a slow and dry death. 

But lo and behold, here was the blessed rain that not only saved the garden but also helped yield the largest, juiciest tomatoes her parents have ever seen. They decided to name their first human child May, under the conviction that if they named her after the month she was born in it would bring bad luck. Supposedly based on some Slavic superstition, in the same category as knocking on teeth instead of wood because wood burns.

“Would you like something else?” asked the waiter, materializing near her designated cosy tiny corner in her favourite café, bringing her back to the present moment. 

“No, I’m good for the moment, thank you.” She smiled at him, trying to fight the burgeoning urge to order something else. She was already on coffee number 3 and she was starting to feel the texture of the song that was playing. 

Now that she was at peace again, she tried to remember what brought on the sudden reminiscence about her birth. It was probably that it was a particularly rainy day, as she people watched through the window in front of her, sometimes fixating on different water streaks when there were no people to ponder about. Thinking back, she realized it was not the rain but also the couple saying goodbye on the sidewalk right in front of the café. Shielded from the element by their umbrellas. They were locked in an embrace for much longer than seemed necessary. She wondered what it was that kept them interlocked. ‘Maybe they just broke up...’ She thought but immediately dismissed as it seemed too long of a hug even for that. 

Suddenly the girl with the red umbrella pulled away, wiping her face and smiling at the slightly smaller girl with a blue umbrella also wiping her face. As they put some distance between them, she noticed that red umbrella girl had a backpack and a suitcase. Ah, tale as old as time, Red umbrella is moving away. Tragic. She concluded. I guess it also be that these ladies had a flare for theatrics and were just saying goodbye for a few hours. Either way they seemed to be experiencing strong emotions that fascinated her. 

Her mind wondered back to her parents. She thought of them often because they exemplified the one quality in relationships she valued the most and found herself endlessly chasing. Love. There wasn’t a moment in her childhood and teenage years where she has any doubt her parents loved each other. In the morning rush to get everyone out of the house, they still found a moment to whisper sweet nothings and hold hands. If one was even a smidge tired, the other would bleed out on the spot if it meant they could transfer their energy to the other. Same applied to May, they saw her as a miracle made of their love and they treated her as such. She was aware of how rare it was, both how she was raised and the fact that her parents were still together after 30 years of marriage. Worst of all, she yearned for that rarity. She longed for the way love made her feel.

It was odd when you thought about it. Usually it goes like this: a child is unloved or doesn’t receive a lot of love from family. This child grows up and becomes obsessed with love to compensate for the utter lack of warmth in their childhood. This made sense, but May never lacked love, care, or companionship. Her home life was peachy and she wasn’t the biggest loser at school. The closest she came to understanding her infatuation with love was in terms of hard drugs. When a mother is addicted to heroin and becomes pregnant, it is said the child is born an addict as the dependency is passed from the mother to the baby. Maybe Mom was so full of love, it entered my bloodstream and made me crave love like a heroin addict. The comparison made her huff a quiet chuckle. 

Her love stories didn’t use to be disastrous. It began with teenage crushes; she would notice a classmate and for a month or two experience obsession bordering on psychosis. Quite a normal teenage girl experience. Her first serious relationship lasted exactly 3 months, which isn’t long for an adult but lasted a lifetime for a 15-year-old and meant just as much. The name of her first love was Marie Clune. And she was breath-taking. She had long blond hair, eyes like a chestnut when it first pops out of its shell and exactly 15 freckles speckled on her pale face. Best of all, she listened to Marina and the Diamonds which was just the coolest. May loved her with an intensity like she never experienced. Every day she saw her at school, she felt the warmth of desire prickle under her skin of her entire body and it felt like a million fireworks going off at once. All normal bodily functions ceased to work and instead, short circuited. She felt nauseous, shaky and somehow both cold and hot at the same time. She loved it. 

There was just one tiny problem. The intensity lasted only for the first month of the relationship and as the girls came to know each other and became comfortable together, the feelings vanished and were replaced by a cold familiarity that bored her. May was confused:  where did the feelings with the big F go? She managed one more month before suddenly declaring that her Mom and Dad has forbad the relationship as it was interfering with her grades. For the record, they barely knew what courses she was taking or even how to log into the school portal to track her grades. 

Now, at 24, she knew what she experienced then was called the honeymoon phase. Whatever name it had, she loved it and had continually chased it since Marie Clune. She craved the rush, the initial nervousness about the person and the morbid curiosity you had about one another. This backfired spectacularly as she found herself dating three people at once, adding a new person after the first month of the previous relationship. For a while it worked in her favour. However, as you might expect, her luck didn’t last forever and her relationship scheme came crashing down. Person A found out about Person C, who told Person B. All in one day. They all stormed her apartment and demanded answers, all screaming at her in their respective native languages. It was pretty rough and May gave up trying to explain that she did love them all but needed more. Eventually, they ran out of things to yell. They cursed her whole bloodline, and left her shellshocked curled up in a fetal position on the sofa. In the end, her scorned lovers did go on to form a throuple, so it wasn’t so bad for them. May, however, realized that something had to change. She did love them all at specific points in their respective relationships and she was almost content with the number of feelings she was experiencing at one time for once in her life. 

But then she had none and she felt without a purpose or particular spark in her life. But she couldn’t do it again, so she made the decision to be alone for the first time in her life and spend some time with herself.

As she was watching the couple outside, she realized it had been almost 6 months her Relationship Armageddon took place. Two of which were spent rotting in bed and crying on the phone to her friends and parents about how she will never find true love, satisfying her completely. But I did it. I’m still here.

She continued to watch the couple, blurred and radiant through the water-covered window, go for a final kiss and return to an embrace so passionate the Blue umbrella fell to the ground. She found herself holding her breath. The girls peeled away from each other for one last time and the walked in the drizzle in opposite directions of sidewalk until she couldn’t see them anymore. May found herself fighting the compulsion to go and yell at them to not do it, to not separate when it struck her. They weren’t separating. Despite not being present for the conversation between the two and only interpreting what she saw, she knew this wasn’t a breakup. She knew a difficult decision had been made and an agreement to go through with it was set. That was it. She understood. She understood love wasn’t a feeling, wild and strong like the wind or hail. It was a moment in time. It was a physical state. Love was a choice, to exist for someone, to breathe for someone, to plant tomatoes for someone in the hopes it will make them smile. 

In the 6 months, she spent alone, she had to make many choices. Like the choice to get out of her post-breakup apartment and go out with friends. She got to feel a different type of love that she simply chose to take for granted. Maybe she liked the wild feeling of that crazy love because it didn’t require so much labour like so many other things in life. It is futile to chase something that has to be built to last. Like those fireworks going off at the same time, it will burn with fierce strength but vanish just as suddenly as it lit in the first place.