As if a breath of fresh air is available at any moment.
It feels like everything I do and write must matter beyond me. And this is true but sometimes the most intimate acts can be truly transformative. Maybe the issue of scale is an illusion; for our bodies are a universe to the atoms within. Maybe in healing our bodies and our intimate lives, we heal the world in ways that we cannot always see or trace. Just maybe. Just maybe it is okay to write about my days with my 4yo child—playing, learning, exploring. Maybe these movements matter in ways that I will never fully grasp.
Kaia was afraid of bees. She ran down the sidewalk toward me with a look of panic on her face, shouting, “Bee! Bee!” (Ironically, her middle name is Bea, short for Beatrice after my grandmother.) I gave her a hug and told her it’s okay.
Bees don’t want to sting you. They only sting when they are surprised or you accidently interrupt them. I reminded her about the one time she mistakenly stepped on a bee. The sting hurt but it got better.
The bees are just doing a job and their job is to help the flowers and feed themselves and their hive from the flowers. We love flowers so isn’t it wonderful that the bees are here? We need the bees. The flowers need the bees and the bees need the flowers.
I told her that we could look online and learn all about how the bees and flowers work together. She seemed interested and as we went about our day, she spotted a stationary bee on its back on the sidewalk. We squatted down close. “It passed away,” I told her. “Why?” “Maybe it was very old; I’m not sure.” She brought her face close to it and was silent as she looked at it intently. She said, “Poor little bee. I love you.”
Kaia is no longer afraid of bees. She’s fascinated with them. I too have developed respect, growing knowledge, and admiration for bees. In fact, several weeks after learning lots about bees, watching many youtube videos, and observing bees on our daily walks as they pollinate flowers, we came again upon a dead bee.
Kaia squatted down close and asked, “Can I touch it?” “Yes.” She gingerly laid her finger upon the bee and then we took a helicopter seed and I gently wiped the bee off the pavement and into the grass. She picked up the helicopter seed and lay it over the dead bee.
Intimacy. Our lives are deeply intertwined.
My new favorite picture of us. This image has nothing to do with bees directly but everything to do with life and magic and nature and interconnectivity.