I once wrote four poems depicting the seasons as people. I seldom anthropomorphize nature, as the results get pretty silly sometimes. (Visualize Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” with her mouth pressed to Nature’s sweet flowing breast while, wearing a nest of robins in her hair. The image gets more than a bit complicated.)

My poems were visual, but I let them remain people we’d possibly recognize. Spring took the form of a fresh, playful young girl, maybe in her mid-teens, a bit dreamy and romantic. Summer was a confident, mature woman, more like someone’s favorite aunt. Autumn was a carefree youth, flexing his muscles and tossing leaves in autumn sunshine, while Winter was a dour old man who’d become weary of life and simply waited for time to run its course. My initial intention had been to pair the poems with drawings of people I knew who fit the images in my mind. I suppose it was a blessing that I never got around to following up on the plan, though like all ideas, I couldn’t trash the whole thing – just maybe. there is something there worth saving.

Except for Spring, I never got around to assigning names to the seasons. She more or less named herself May, and I gave her some of the characteristics of several Mays I’ve known in my lifetime, Oddly, there were four of them and they all came into my life within a span of four or five years – possibly the reason the name stuck so tightly.

There was a young girl from Pella who lived with us during the school year and earned her room and board as a sort of “mother’s helper” so she could attend high school in Knoxville before Pella had its own high school. Her name was, officially, AnnaMay, and she went home nearly every weekend to the family farm where she helped with chores including milking goats, gardening, and laundry. She was a sunny, willing girl and she loved to play with me and my sisters, as we were near the ages of her own sisters. She was a clever seamstress and could produce, in an afternoon, a school-dress for one of us with matching bloomers and a similar outfit for a favorite doll. The bloomers were to be worn over our regular underpants for the sake of modesty when climbing on the Jungle-gym on the school playground. AnnaMay taught us songs and games that were part of her Dutch heritage, brushed our hair every night and often read us bedtime stories. I loved her and missed her when she went home to spend the summer with her own family.

Next door to us, lived a young couple who were expecting their first child near the time of my birthday. The wife’s name was May, but everyone called her Maisie. She promised me that if the baby was a girl and born on my birthday, she would name her after me. That seemed to be a great honor, as I had been told it was an honor for me to have been named after my mother. Actually, I found it to be more of a nuisance than am honor, as my mother’s family insisted on calling me Mildred Lucille to avoid confusion. All my attempts to get them to settle for Milli were rejected and I never became Milli until I started college and introduced myself as Milli rather than Mildred.

Martha Mae was one of several high school students hired to teach various games and crafts in the town’s Summer Recreation Program when I was between fourth and fifth grade. She appeared, two or three mornings a week, on the playground at our elementary school, supplied with shiny strips of plastic-coated string and taught us how to make four-strand braids into various useful objects. I liked Martha Mae and enjoyed talking with her. She seemed to really care about the kids who attended her short craft lessons and was infinitely patient with the slow learners. I sensed the essence of a natural teacher and imitated her style when I began teaching my first art classes.

Then there was Mrs. May, the town librarian, who showed me art books, poets, playwrights, humorists, women authors, books other than those written for teenage girls. And she never once tried to censor my choices of reading material. She showed me what libraries are really about.