What the bees taught me

When I was 11 years old, we moved to a house on a street in a small town. My room, if that is what you could call it was a curtained off section of the basement. My bed was under a window whose ledge was at ground level. There were flowers there when we arrived. Most of them were not there when we left, grown over with weeds. One morning I woke up and something had stung my calf. A bug of some sort. It was quite a ferocious bite and when I jumped it stung me again. I whipped the sheet off and found a bee. 

I captured it with a glass and a piece of paper and took it upstairs. My brother or my father, I don’t remember which, told me it could not have stung me twice because bees will die if they sting you because they have barbed stingers that end up being left behind in whoever they bite and that kills them. Two days later I got another sting and another bee. So my brother killed it. And this became a regular occurrence for a number of weeks, waking up to a bee. I became quite adroit at whipping the sheets off when I first woke up to avoid being stung. Sometimes they bit me anyway. I would find out later that there are indeed types of bees that can sting twice.

The thing was, I began to feel sorry for the bees. Because if I brought them upstairs they would be killed. So I got a bowl of water and a dinner plate that I smeared with honey and then I began to collect the bees. They lived on the plate of honey in my bedroom. I would collect them and feed them the honey and watch their antennae-like things slipping into the honey. They seemed quite content to stay there. I had quite a few of them over the weeks. So I lived in the bedroom with the bees until one day I took them outside and let them go. That bothered me because I didn’t know who would feed them then but I had thought it the right thing to do.

On the surface of course one could ask why on earth no one cared enough to find the source of these bees that would sting me. No one cared to even notice that I had a plate of bees in the bedroom. But that is, although a factor of my life, not the thing that defined me. What defined me was that even though the bees stung me, I cared for them. It is why I have cared for even the monsters of this life who will sometimes sting you. It is their nature. Just as it is my nature to forgive. But I will not have a plate of bees in my room again. Forgive and set them free. That is what the bees taught me.

What the wicked weed taught me

 

Oh it tormented me. I’ve lived here 31 years (minus one year where I made that mistake which is a terrible story in and of itself and has nothing whatsoever to do with what the wicked weed taught me). The point was, for 31 years I lived with this stupid weed bush thing on the side of the road on my property. Drove me crazy. It was a tenacious horribly ugly looking thing with many branches and innocuous leaf-like things.

 I would hack at it and chop it and even once tried digging it up but the damn thing had roots that went all the way to China. So I just cut it down every year. And the people whose job it is to clear the side of the road would sometimes haphazardly with their machine on any given year lop the top off and that would please me. “There!” I’d say to the horrible thing.

Then the dog-strangling vine came and gardening of any sort took on an air of misery. And then I got quite ill and so the wicked weed went it’s wicked weed way for awhile. I would still lament it’s growth so ridiculously misplaced even for a weed thing, half on and off the slope to the road with its jumbly moth-eaten greenery lacking any symmetry of form. On the days when I was feeling better I would make an effort to dig out the dog-strangling vine around the thing so that it looked somewhat like a presentable if poorly chosen plant.

The summer when George had died and the silence of my soul came and turned my very being into a numb and broken thing; that summer was not even summer to me. It was just what it was. I would sit looking out at the sweep of trees and sky and feel nothing. Nothing made sense. Nothing at all.

Outside, the weed grew taller and the man who was clearing out the dog-strangling vine came into the house and handed me a perfect apple. One perfect green apple. And I said, “where ever did you get the apple?” And he told me it was from the apple tree on the front by the side of the road. It had produced an apple, my wild wicked weed… one perfect apple. No more. No less. So I went out and looked and there it was… my wild wicked weed grown tall into an apple tree. And me, a country girl, hadn’t even figured it out. Me, the one sent out with baskets to collect apples in the orchard up the road as a child. Me. I did not see what I should have seen.

Sometimes the demons that we fight. Sometimes the battles and the judgment and the struggles turn out to be a blessing. Sometimes we even forget that what we knew once can be forgotten and life may be a re-learning. Sometimes there are unexpected graces and they have no reason for happening. They simply do. This is what the wicked weed taught me.

The 1001 Things List


When I was really at the point of my darkest despair in my grief I had stopped eating. I was barely functioning. I went to the doctor and insisted something was wrong with me because I couldn’t eat. I had no appetite whatsoever and that had never happened in my lifetime before. But the tests came back normal. I realized I’d better see a therapist because a person has to eat.

This year, on the anniversary of George’s death I went there again. The dark place and there was a part of me that rebelled. So I wrote a list of 10 things that made me happy because surely to heavens this kind of pain has to have a balance. I took it to my therapist. He said make it a list of 100. I made a list of 100. It was becoming very difficult. I figured I had to restrict how many times I mentioned food like escargots in garlic butter sauce and how many times I mentioned every animal I and my friends owned. He said make it a list of 1000.

And that is where I am. A list of 1001 things that make me happy. Mine took months. See something happens to you. You start spending the day looking for something to write on your list that makes you happy. It's the darndest thing. In the middle of despair.

I started out monosyllabic. By the time I'd finished that had changed. I started out with me. By the time I'd finished I realized it was about others. I started out with grey and ended up with God, however you can conceive he/she/it/they/them/zem to be. This is this antidote to this world we are living in. Watch the news: write something for your list. Someone maliciously attacks you: write something for your list. Wonder how you're gonna make it through the day? read your list.

When the whining starts, which it will at around about the 212th thing on your list, remember I'm not asking you to sail the high seas in a raft in a hurricane. I'm just saying build a raft for when you end up in the high seas in a hurricane.

This is my gift to you. Because sometimes, happy as you may be right now, sometimes life is a nightmare. I know you know that. So you go back and you read your list. By the time you’ve finished your list you have found so much gratitude for this life, I can’t begin to tell you. You are to make a list of 1001 things that make you happy. And it will be hard! You’d think it would be easy but around about 437 you start listing TV characters…. Don't give up. My advice. Start with a colour. Green makes me happy.

Love to you all.