May was once my favorite month. In spite of the teasing I was subjected to growing up for loving a month filled with final exams and standardized testing, I never tired of the full swing of sun-filled evenings, of the perfectly mild temperatures, of watching the clouds I loathed bleed out into the blue.
My impression of May is, naturally, shaped by my experience growing up at Seattle’s latitude, spoiled by the pristine springs and summers of Puget Sound. In the Midwest, where my father was born and raised, May is linked to gritty snow, road construction and, above all, mud.