As the strands shorten and we are drawn closer to the center, we duck under each other to create the proper criss-cross of streamers. Eventually we drop our strands of crepe paper which gather in a colorful frenzy at the bottom of the pole, while flowers and shorter streamers on top flutter in the spring breeze. We finish our dance of the Maypole holding hands, boy-girl, boy-girl, boy-girl in a dizzying, celebratory spinning circle until the music ends and the enormous crowd bursts into applause, the half dozen Maypoles standing like proud spring sentinels surrounded by dancers all around the courtyard, like trees ringed by bright spring blossoms.

There’s just one problem with this picture: It isn’t what happened, though it’s what was supposed to happen.

The largest annual event at Steffan Manor, the elementary school in Vallejo where I received an astonishingly good education, was the annual May Day celebration. The school was large enough that there were three or four classes of each grade from kindergarten through sixth. Weeks before the May 1 celebration, the preparations would begin. Teachers, by some process I never knew, would choose a dance for each grade. We would choose or have chosen for us a partner, paired by height when we were younger and either by chance or the cruel pecking order of peer choice in the higher grades.  During the weeks and days before the celebration, we would abandon our studies of, say, the California missions or long division, to practice our dance on the playground in good weather, in the large, oak-floored auditorium in the rain. Over and over we were coached as we learned the steps, turns, and spins. Instructions were sent home as to how we were to dress. Some years the boys were required to wear white shirts, another year I recall plaid. The girls always wore full skirts and I remember looking forward to the new one my mother would make each May Day.

I don’t remember the dance we did in kindergarten, though I remember clearly my partner, a smart little boy in a white shirt and red jacket named Creighton who grew into an awkward bookish young man taunted by his peers, including, I am ashamed to admit, me. But when we were 5, I had an enormous crush on him and I remember sitting next to him in our tiny, low to the ground chairs as we watched the other kids perform their dances, grade by grade from the youngest to the oldest as the celebration built to its grand finalé, the Dance of the Maypole. I had a flower on my wrist, probably made of tissue paper, and he wore one on his shirt; the music was played on an old record player, blasting over a loudspeaker. Dozens of rows of folding chairs held parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends. It was a grand day.

A sixth grade tradition

I thought the Maypole Dance was the most exquisite, magical thing I had ever seen, even better than a Christmas tree. My first year in school, my sister was in the 6th grade and it was tradition that the sixth graders performed the central dance, one of the privileges of seniority. I remember watching my radiant big sister, her long dark hair tied up into a high pony tail with a scarf, a white blouse, shapely against her early breasts, contrasting with a huge full quilted black taffeta skirt that whirled when she spun. I was enchanted. The weaving and winding of the colorful strands was one of the things that made me want to grow up. That dance was so enticing, and the day when I would do it seemed so far away; I simply ached with longing. I never thought I would be that old.

I never doubted that anyone other than Wayne would be my partner for the Maypole Dance. But something went wrong.

May Day Celebrations came and went, and I remember them in a haze of color, tinny music, and heat, for it was often sizzling on the tarmac in early May north of San Francisco. Many times, I returned home in the afternoon with a blazing sunburn. I remember the years in a blur, as I spun on the courtyard with a partner I adored or hated, trying to pick out my mother’s face in the crowd, hoping she was proud of my dancing prowess. Always I waited for the culmination of the day and of everyone’s efforts, the Dance of the Maypole. As the time grew near, older boys would bring the poles out from the corners where they waited, adorned with all of their strands and streamers and flowers, and set them in the center of huge white circles which remained all year, used at other times to circumscribe the boundaries for a game of, say, dodge ball, or a group of girls wanting to keep out boys. Each class would gather around its given pole, the music would begin, and in a formal, ceremonial gesture, each student would take his or her proper strand, unroll it and the slow moving around the circle would begin, gradually picking up speed until it was time to begin the weaving of the strands that would cover the pole. With several groups dancing simultaneously, a colorful Maypole at the center of each, it was a glorious, breathtaking sight.

I had not a doubt but that it would be Wayne, the young Hawaiian boy I so loved

For years, I imagined myself dancing around that Maypole, weaving in and out, over and under the boys and girls I had known since kindergarten. I anticipated my partner—I had not a doubt but that it would be Wayne, the young Hawaiian boy I so loved—envisioned the special skirt my mother would make, blue, Wayne’s favorite color, and taffeta for the sound of it as I twirled. More than any of the other promises of age—junior high school, breasts, lipstick, night-time dances, my first kiss (well, maybe not more than my first kiss)—I longed to dance the dance. But something went wrong.

Sometime before I was in sixth grade, it was decided to change the class that performed the Dance of the Maypole; my class, unintentionally I am sure, a simple cruel coincidence, was passed by. One year, the fourth graders did it; another, the little kindergarteners. But never my class: never me. Never me. Instead, we celebrated in lesser fashion with folk dances of Russian, Ireland, America, what have you, always without props and always without the finest prop of all, the naked Maypole, waiting for its colorful woven cloak and crown of flowers.

I was astonishingly brokenhearted, and as I think back, I recall that I kept my devastation to myself. I don’t remember ever saying a word about it to anyone. My disappointment has remained in my heart all of these years, bright as the May sun and silent, until now.