May on the Prairie

May in Medicine Hat is a negotiation.

The snow is gone, probably. Your neighbor turns the hose on during a 22 degree afternoon. You wake up to icicles. You want to believe the worst is behind you and most years you are right, but you have also lived through enough May long weekends to know that hope is not a forecast. You pack a sweater. You go. It snows without fail.

That is the thing about this month. It does not ask you to wait until conditions are perfect. It just keeps moving and expects you to move with it.

Connection works the same way. The plans that have been living in the vague territory of "we should get together sometime." May is the window before summer takes everyone in different directions. It does not happen on its own. May is the month you either make it happen or it stays in the someday pile until fall.

The practice for May:

Make the plan and send the text. A date and a time.

That brightness that May keeps promising: terracotta, cacti, the warmth of a room where the light lands first. That is Sunroom.