Art, holidays, Uncategorized

A Tisket, A Tasket

37 Comments

You all know I love my crafts and I love marking holidays as well. So May Day is one of my favorites.  When I was about 8 I took part in a May Day celebration that involved dressing up and dancing around a May Pole; Nonny made me a beautiful flowery dress and I was in heaven.

To this day I love to do May Day baskets. This year I’m doing 4 regular size “baskets” that will be hung on door knobs in the wee hours (and I mean wee… my next door neighbors are both teachers and one of them leaves at 6 a.m.!)  I’m also doing little baskets for my co-workers.  I know this is a custom that has fallen by the way side, but I figure if I’m still having fun, what the heck!

You have four baskets to deliver to anybody you want (alive or dead). Who do they go to?  And why?

 

37 thoughts on “A Tisket, A Tasket”

  1. One to my son, since he delivered May baskets until he was in high school, one to my mom since she deserves one, one to my daughter just because, and one to my be st friend because she needs cheering up.

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    My dad
    My grandpa
    Joe Brice, my former band teacher and Sunday School teacher
    My husband Lou, because he tolerates me at my worst

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  3. One to my sister. It’s her birthday. One to a friend whose son died in early May ten years ago. One to a new neighbor, as a welcome. And the last one to VS in gratitude for the delightful blog post.

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    1. Thank you, but now that I’ve set the question, I’m wondering if 4 is enough? I’m having troubles skinnying it down to four.

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  4. I’d give a basket to my mother, in part to make up for all the Mother’s Day weekends I didn’t share with her. Minnesota’s main fishing season opens on the second weekend of May, which is when America celebrates Mother’s Day. If you are a Minnesota angler, the opening weekend is the most sacred moment in each year. If you are a magazine journalist covering angling in Minnesota, missing the opener would be unthinkable.

    Sorry, mom. No hard feelings, I hope. If you dig down below the paper flowers in the basket you’ll find enough M&Ms to make you happy for an hour. Enjoy!

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  5. If I’m limited to four, I’d give one to each of my grandparents as a way to open a conversation about their lives. I know their genealogy but I don’t know their stories. My father’s father died when I was four. My mother’s father died when I was ten. My mother’s mother lived in Milwaukee and we seldom saw her and my father’s mother didn’t talk about the past. I would love, at this late date, to be able to know what they did and why they did it and what their early years were like.

    If I had two more baskets, I’d like to do the same thing with my parents. They never went into much detail about their youth and I never asked.

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    3. I wonder how well most people know their parents. I knew a great deal about mine. When I concentrated on the project of writing about them I discerned much more. That seemed normal to me.

      When I was doing the online dating thing I was surprised to meet families in which the kids knew next to nothing about their parents. Mostly, they didn’t seem to care because they were so self-absorbed. It seemed odd that I, a stranger, knew far more about their mother’s life than her own kids.

      I now think most young people know very little about their parents’ lives, and much of what they think they know is not true. This might partially explain the popularity of sending one’s DNA off to be analyzed. For some folks, doing that is more natural than what seemed right to me, which was to ask my parents to tell their stories.

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      1. Some excellent points Steve. When my father died I didn’t quite know what to do with my grief and so I ended up pouring it into a scrapbook. I spent about a year doing the scrapbook and spent a lot of time on the phone with my mom during that time as well. Afterwards I started calling it Scrapbook Grief Therapy but it worked for me. And also made me realize that I needed to get this kind of information from my mother before she was gone since I wouldn’t have anyone to ask afterwards. I told Nonny once that when she passes the only thing that I want of her possessions is that scrapbook back.

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      3. I was fortunate to have grandparents and parents who loved to talk about themselves, the family, and the past. My paternal grandfather and his brothers would talk about the impact Napolean had on the family when he invaded Ostfriesland. They had heard their grandparents talk about the same thing! There are still lots of questions I will never have answered, like addresses in Hamburg whete my grandmother lived, and the name of my great grandfather’s dray company in Hamburg.

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    4. I did have a chance to talk about my maternal grandmother’s life with her. It was so interesting. This is a question that only we “older baboons” think to ask. There was a prominent therapist named Murray Bowen, who assigned struggling clients to do just that–interview their elders. He did this with the intent of learning how their circumstances might fit into that of a family story they might not have been aware of.

      Context. I love context.

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    5. bill i think you can take what you know and craft a story to your liking
      amy tan did this and found as she dug in stuff that blew her away
      i bet you’d have fun with it too

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  6. One each to Renee and tim, because they are new grandparents. One to my mom because she helped us make and deliver these when I was little. One to her sister Irma who just passed away last week.

    Will be back later to do four more – as VS said above, four might not be enough.

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  7. I would give a basket to each of my 3 boys filled with lots of love, food and money to take them through all the ups and downs of their lives (who said this was reality?). A basket to my darling husband, Jim, filled with joy, good health and fulfillment. And a basket each to my Mom and Dad in gratitude for being the wonderful parents that they were and everything they taught me.

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  8. ari gashi gets the first one
    wow what a trip

    my wife gets the second for putting up with life i’ve thrown at her

    my mom cause she’s so nice

    my 5 kids for being such a big part of my journey

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  9. enver gashi is his dad
    arian is a very common armenian name
    they will spell it arion to distance from white supremisists
    ari gashi is a red headed little man who doesn’t know circumsision doesn’t happen at birth where it’s incorporated into the rest of entry trauma. it comes one of these days
    he’s got really good lungs but seems way mellower than a munchkin ought to be
    i’ll figure out how to plug in pictures

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  10. Castle Danger church used to deliver may baskets to shut ins, new residents, church members over 80, those in need of a help to their budget. Last group and shutins were more large box with food staples. Other two were baskets. One charming old man, the most charming person I ever knew, loved getting a girly flowery basket. He would be waiting and give us packets of lefse to add to other baskets after we delivered to him first. It was a delight to be part of that. The rare new residents.did not know about lefse very well. One grumpy, no surly, surly old man, to whom I would deliver, would rail against churches, our church and pastors. He was a part of 21 cousins, from two families, who were bedrock members of the church. We never did anything but make the deliveries to anyone, no religion. The old grump would say he was going to throw out the food, well! He would but one did not waste food. He really needed the food. He lived in the very heart of the community. I know siblings and cousins kept him going. He had fished and then he had no income and no retirement. He would get mad at me if I agreed with anything he said. I was supposed to be his enemy. He demanded no funeral. When he died we honored that wish, except a family gathering on his lake shore. No ne knew where all that anger came from. He raised three sons of his drunken brother. Quite the man.

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  11. It’s official! The Eddies’ Annual Memorial Picnic will not happen this year. Just got the email saying so. I’d like to send a basket to Paul, Tom, Mark, Chuck and Phil as a thank you for the nineteen years they hosted this community event.

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  13. Pingback: Glossary, Almost Two Decades into the Millennium | Trail Baboon

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