While it wasn’t a one-room schoolhouse, the largest block of my formal education was conducted in the same building. As a kid in a small Cape Cod town, Mashpee Middle School was where I logged the most time. Kindergarten through eighth grade: Mrs. Stearns, Mrs. DeConto, Mrs. Dottridge, Mrs. Frank, Mrs. Dottridge (lucky me! I got her twice!), Mrs. Côté, Mrs. Devine, Mr. LaBranche, Mrs. Feeley. Even as a fortysomething, the names of my homeroom teachers stay reliably present. Like how I can still hear the acceleration of the school bus as it bumped us down Old Barnstable Road past the Church Village. I think of this in a passing way while I wander around my apartment and try to unearth my car keys….
Mashpee eventually grew large enough to have its own high school, and that was built in 1996 after I left. Before that time, kids were bussed over to Falmouth and this became our first experience in being pushed out into the world. I’m serious. Integrating into a new place—even if it’s just a town over on the same peninsula—necessitates new brain mapping and social integration. But even as the details of life picked up speed in Falmouth, it has always been impossible to discard the founding memories of Mashpee Middle School.
Today is May Day. Here in Italy, it’s Labor Day and a national holiday. Back in Mashpee, May Day was notable because MMS first graders would put on a maypole out in the front courtyard. While university-level Megan would learn more about what a maypole symbolizes, as a little kid, this was a big ticket day. We’d practice in the gym in the weeks prior before finally, on May first, our teachers would wind crepe paper around our heads and hand us technicolor paper flowers that we’d give away during the performance. That’s how I reflect upon my earliest May Day.
With the explansion of the school system, I have no idea if the maypole performance is still a thing. In the decades since the 1980s and 90s, Mashpee has grown in more ways than I can know. As a former resident, I’ve simply been gone for too long to track it all. But while time does move along, dragging us and change with it, I am still interested to return every now and again to see how the town looks through adult eyes.
I have a photo stashed away somewhere in my phone. It’s a crappy picture, one that I snapped from the parking lot of MMS the last time I was home. It’s named something different now—meaningless to me and my existence. But from where I took the photo, I found that I could summon memories were made even on the external school grounds. The running races in the playground, the sort of reverse tug-of-wars we’d attempt by using the merry-go-round. Invariably, one side would lose and the big flat disc would spin towards the losers, dragging at least one person down underfoot of everyone else. I have no idea how the teachers let us do it, but it was marvelous.
I also think about the curb in front of the school. Joe DiMaggio’s buses would line up at around 3pm to collect us. And on a warm afternoon about a month after May 1st, the greatest moment of all would come. That was the last day of school when adults of some authority would be waiting for us to board. While they would normally hand out school notices that I never passed on to my parents, now they held boxes of semifreddo amazingness in their hands. The last day of school meant ice cream on the bus. An ephemeral event of smiling consumption—but one that held more meaning than any other holiday on the calendar.
I recognize that if you are not from Mashpee, or don’t share a similar flavor of experience—then most of this will mean little to you.
May Day, as I became an employed adult, came to take on a decidedly serious meaning. I think of it now in terms of “m’aidez”—or “mayday” as the distress call is known. It’s a word, if heard in deliberate application, that is enough to make your heart drop into your shoes. And while it has exactly nothing to do with a maypole or the first of May—it is of course a homophone that plays into my own personal word association game. Today on this public holiday, as a helicopter continues to circle overhead, I think about the matured significance of mayday.
The helicopters circling from Rome to the southern reaches of the boot are operating today to ensure that on this holiday, folks are not out “in giro”. The lockdown order is still in effect, and the use of aircraft for enforcement has been constant. Like that old Mashpee bus, the sound of the aircraft rotors is one that I will remember long after we emerge from this pandemic.
And with the ever-present notification of the helos, I can’t help but think about my line of work. The time I spent aboard gray hulled ships that had one or two helicopters embarked. The Rome aircraft remind that this past week, mayday calls were most likely transmitted somewhere in the Ionian Sea—not too far from where I now live. The gutting reminder that a Canadian helicopter was lost at sea—the Halifax crew and all of their own homegrown experiences had vanished in an instant. It is an understatement to say that Nova Scotia had a pretty tough April.
I don’t have any neat bow with which to tie all of these observations up. If you’re anything like me these days, you’ve allowed your mind to be a free-associating mess. But it’s a(nother) new month, and we are all doing our best to create meaningful days. It’s hard to know, later down the road, which one particular thing will stick as a lasting memory…and I don’t even know if that matters anyway. As for me, today I just wanted to paint a picture of some things that I’ve found worthy of remembrance. The people and places that helped to grow me up, and yes, acknowledging the existence and sacrifices of those whom I never met, but still share some parallels.