I found it in a box of my childhood things – this strange greenish-brown cone made out of heavy paper. It was faded and brittle and flat. To the unaware eye it looked like something that should just be tossed in the trash. I nearly tossed it myself; even my eyes didn’t recognize what it was for a moment.

Then I knew. Like a rush from the past I remembered. It was my May Basket from the third grade.

That day all those years ago, my teacher, Mrs. Burrell had our entire class construct May Day baskets. Mine was made of bright green construction paper and glue. I rolled it horizontally and shaped it like a cone. Then I cut out some more green paper for a loop on the top and added some bright yellow paper in the shape of a flower on the front. (Well, the yellow piece actually looked more like a bulls-eye, but I was only eight.)

“May Day is a time to celebrate Spring,” she told us. “May Baskets are a tradition that is part of our early history. You leave a basket on the door of the person you love, ring the bell, and then run away. When they find it they know that someone cares about them. So boys and girls, I want you to take your basket home, pick a flower from your yard to put in it and leave it on the door of the person you love most.”

I still remember hiding behind the large oak tree outside the kitchen window of our big white house. We had only lived there a few months and the prettiest rose bush grew under that tree. I could see mom working in the kitchen and remember my heart pounding as I tried to make sure she didn’t see me. The thorns cut my fingers and caught on my dress. The rough bark of the tree scraped my knee as I leaned around it, careful to not be seen, trying to pick the largest rose.

I finally got it and scampered to the front porch to leave my treasure. The rose filled the little green cone and smelled sweet and fragrant as I hung it on our big wooden door. I rang the doorbell and ran.

The only problem was I ran so fast I came in the back door before mom made it to the front door. She was halfway through the house, heard me at the back door, turned around and walked back into the kitchen. “Claudine, did you just ring that doorbell?

“Yes,” I nodded with a smile. I was excited.

“Well, don’t do that again. When I am in the middle of cooking and have to stop it isn’t funny.”

My eyes filled with tears at the scolding. I realized she wasn’t going to go find her basket.

Surprised by my response, she knew that something was wrong. “Claudine,” she said softly, “what did I do?”

By then I had started to cry.

She turned and without saying a word walked to the front door, I trailed behind her. When she opened the door and found her flower she started to cry with me.

“Oh honey, Momma is so sorry,” she said pulling me into a hug. “I hurt your feelings. I thought you were playing a prank. I was wrong. This is so beautiful. You left me a May Basket and I didn’t go look.”

She was filled with regret over her initial don’t-bother-me response. She completely misunderstood my intentions and thought I was just being ornery. In reality I was trying to show her I loved her.

It was a simple mistake but one she would talk about the rest of her life. She never forgot the sad look on my face and the realization that she had somehow hurt my feelings.

The very next year on May Day, she began what became our special tradition…She sent me flowers.

As I got older I sent her flowers too. Every year. In fact, it got to be a contest between us with each one trying to outdo the other by having our flowers sent to the other one first. One year she had my brother and his wife deliver them to my doorstep. On occasion she would show up with them and not tell me she was coming (and then we would go shopping). I took hers to her at midnight once. That was certainly beating her to it! We sometimes even would unknowingly buy each other the same flowers. Then we’d laugh and say, “Great minds think alike.”

After my family and I moved away, I left a standing order with the flower shop in our hometown to take her a basket bright and early every May Day morning. That way she could never beat me to it again.

It was our special tradition.

The last few years of her life, living near me again, she didn’t always remember when it was May Day…but I did. I would take her flowers and she would tell me the story of the little girl who rang the doorbell and left the basket on her door.

“Your face tuned up and I knew I had done something wrong,” she would tell me. Even with Alzheimer’s taking her memories she never forgot that it was me, and she never forgot how she felt when I cried.

It was six May Days ago when I bought her flowers the last time. It was a hanging basket of purple petunias for her porch. She liked to sit outside and watch the neighborhood kids get off the school bus in the afternoon and most days she would see the flowers and remember to water them as she waited. It was later that summer that she could no longer live in her home. I brought the basket to mine and watered it until winter came and the flowers were gone.

It was winter for her too. She passed the next January.

When I found that flattened out May Basket the other day I wasn’t surprised. After all, she was the woman who kept everything. What did surprise me was my reaction to it. I grabbed it, pulled it to my heart and hollered, “my May Basket.” Then I started laughing and crying at the same time. How pathetic and faded the poor thing looked after all this time!

Then I realized that I look a little more faded and pathetic too. (That made me laugh harder.)

Forrest Gump said that, “Life is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re gonna get.”

I would say that it is like that faded May Basket too. It starts out beautiful and colorful and pretty, but ends up completely different than what you thought it was going to be in the beginning.

May Day will always be a special day for me.

I miss the flowers — but I miss mom more.

Our tradition was simple…childlike even. Yet between the doorbell and that last gift of petunias, we shared laughter, tears, a few shenanigans, and the certainty that even the unexpected can turn out to be perfect.

Happy May Day Mom!!!