Tag: bees

554: “The Bees Belong” (Ross Gay)

                “The worker unfolded the sign that said the bees belong here as much as we do, orienting it so pedestrians could read it…”
                -Ross Gay, The Book of Delights, pg. 211

                From some perspectives the yard outside my front door looks a mess. Last year’s dead stems akimbo, matted brown leaves, a few crocuses pushing up. I’ve been walking by and saying hello.
                A few weeks ago a neighbor and I chatted about solitary bees. When I think about bees I usually think about hives, about honey, but as far as I understand (to that burst of brown leaves and back, maybe) most of the bees from where I live are solitary. As far as I understand (a little less far, this time) most of these solitary bees live in the ground, but some of them will snuggle up in dead stems or hollow wood. Snuggle in for winter. Until it’s warm enough to wake up. Which is one of the many reasons (my neighbor said) they’re never in too much of a hurry to tidy anything. No good to be asleep and have someone come and stack you and your bedding in the waste pile. And how sickening to be the one doing the stacking?
                I’d heard about nesting solitary bees before, but since I chatted with my neighbor, I’ve been saying hello. And listening. I haven’t seen any of them yet, so this evening when I walked by I said how are you doing. I said I’m sleepy, too. I said spring’s coming but it’s still going to freeze tonight. And they were quiet, if they’re here. I spoke softly so as not to disturb them, and then went in to make dinner and crawl inside my blankets.

by Azlan

491: “At night I would lie in bed” (Sue Monk Kidd)

                “At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room…”
-Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

                                One way to start this post is by trying to remember how long ago I first read these words. It was more than half my life ago, I’m pretty sure, which isn’t long if you measure it by many things—my grandma’s lifetime, or the forests I went walking through today—but it can seem pretty long to me. 
                Another way to start is to say I love that moment between (and beyond?) waking and sleeping. The one where Lily (in the book) watches bees. The one where I, at nine or ten, laid awake in the mountain cabin my grandpa built, watching the fox in the woodgrain. I still look at that face sometimes. And the place where I, last night, lay awake with my partner listening to the rain and hearing one of her siblings moving away down inside the house as we all visit for the holidays. And the place where, at seven or eight, the night would open into flowers and talking animals and other figures from the stories my parents had been reading me. (And nightmares and teeth, sometimes). And the place where, at nineteen or twenty, I thought about all the new people I’d met,  all the different ways they walked through the world. 
                I think I’m saying there’s an openness in that lying awake in bed that lets things come together. The buzzing bees. A sibling’s footsteps. A lifetime’s memories. My partner and I are out in Washington State, visiting family. Yesterday we were with her parents and siblings. Today we were with my mom and siblings. The scheduling can feel like a lot, a kind of family crossword. It can also feel easy, sweet, open, full. I pulled The Secret Life of Bees off my sister-in-law’s childhood bookshelf. In waking and falling toward sleep I wonder if we feel some of the ways lives swirl and weave.

by Azlan