I am very, absolutely too much, affected by the bees.
We got our first bees in April 2018. That was a good year for the bees. They were generally manageable; Luke invited friends over to help him do hive checks; all of our bee gear was crisp and fresh and white, unmarred by the wax and mold that would accumulate over the years. We harvested honey late that summer, and then the winter was cold and the hives died. Which we had expected. Onward.
It was never easy again. One year, everything went to plan until July when a swarm of yellow jackets descended, murdering all the bees and taking all the honey. One year, a hive got some kind of awful disease and they seemed to all die overnight. Honestly, I don’t want to get into the minutiae of all the truly awful things that happened to the bees, because I have made a lot of bee-related mistakes, and this newsletter is public, and people do like to email me and tell me I’m a bad person when I tell them about mistakes I’ve made around agriculture. (Why do people do this? What do they gain? Do they possibly think I’m not self-loathing enough? TRUST ME: I AM.)
Last summer, we had a not-so-bad year. We ordered two boxes of bees and two queens (you’re supposed to keep two hives at a time, for a whole bunch of reasons that I won’t get into because this isn’t a bee newsletter); one of the hives did great. I mean, the bees in that hive were mean — they stung Luke eleven times in one day. But maybe that’s what worked so well, was their meanness, their absolute insistence that they were in charge. The other hive died. It could have been lots of things.
But the hive that made it kept making it. It made it all the way through our brutal winter. In the spring, they were almost unbearably active, pollinating anything they could get their legs on.
This is already more about bees than I intended. But you have to believe me when I tell you that I am holding back. I’m wanting to tell you even more bee stuff than I am. (Did you know they have five eyes? Did you know they can understand the concept of zero? DID YOU KNOW THEY PLAY WITH BALLS?)
In June, the hive swarmed. I was deeply emotional about this, even after I googled it and realized that a bee hive swarming is the natural progression of things; it’s the way the hive procreates. The queen spawns a new queen, and then she takes half of the remaining hive away, and then they (I am not kidding) have a political rally to decide where they are going to go. The day they swarmed, the bees spent the afternoon in our next door neighbor’s pear tree. They looked like a volleyball up there. The next day, I guess the votes were in, and the bees were gone.
Half of our hive remained, and still, I couldn’t stop crying about this. I couldn’t explain this emotional reaction to anyone. It was similar to the feeling of watching videos of my daughter as a younger version of herself, and thinking, “That person is gone and I didn’t consent; there was no warning that one day she would move on and become someone else. It just happened. There was nothing about it I could control.”
Maybe you would need to see the bees swarm. It was a gush of thousands and thousands of little flying things exploding out of a place where, historically, flying things only ever entered. It was a flood. It was the solid blob of bees that dissipated into the sky, boundless and chaotic for a moment in time as they tried to orient themselves and figure out where they were supposed to go. The imagery of this – I watched it all day – was an outward expression of the internal experience of being alive. Filling and filling and filling until the day came where nothing more could fit inside the existing shape. Anais Nin put it this way: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” It isn’t just my bees, or even my daughter. It’s myself, too. The becoming we don’t ask for, but there it is.
Yesterday, Luke and my daughter left for South Carolina to visit family. I’ll meet them there on Monday. This will be the longest I’ve been away from either of them since my daughter was born. A terrifying thing is happening: I almost never have this kind of time to examine my own becoming anymore.
Last week, wildfires in Canada filled great swaths of North America with smoke. Chicago’s AQI number was off the chart on my phone. The New York Times said it was nearly 800. The day should have been beautiful; a seventy-five degree stunner I’d have wanted to spend at the beach. But I rode my bike to drop T off at daycare and immediately felt worse than I remembered feeling. I was sure I had a viral infection. But the symptoms never changed from lungs-and-throat-reacting-to-smoke. I just didn’t know it could possibly feel that bad. On day two of the smoke, I decided that I was going to be depressed. I felt tired of fighting, and I had the time to lie in bed and watch three episodes of TV, which is what I did. Also I cried, let myself cry. There’s plenty to cry about.
There are times when a person needs to fight, and I know that that’s true. But the hugeness of the smoke – the whole sky – was not wrangle-able. That was sad. All there was to do was give in to it for the time being, to allow the sadness to settle in for a little while. Like the smoke, it would pass.
On cue, the morning of the day Luke and T left, the new bee queen died. I assume that’s what happened, at least. I am no longer in the business of doing hive checks. I do not want to pull the bees out and look at them and try to force them to do anything differently. Their survival is for them to manage. While I was walking into the yard to feed the chickens, I noticed that bees were fighting their way into the hive in a way that could only mean the hive was being robbed. It had grown too weak. Maybe the smoke was too much for our bees, too.
Luke tried to reduce the entrance to the hive, and he burned paper to try to smoke out the robbers. I knew this was futile, but I loved watching him try. I thought, “It’s worth it to try sometimes, just so that you can attract the people who are going to love you.”
Then he and T left, and I spent the day watching nature undo herself. These bees make me so sad, but they also make me feel connected to everything that matters. Yesterday, I was only a witness, and that felt important.
That excellent bud quote keeps going, by the way:
“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.
Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.”
There are parts of this season – my favorite season, for the record – that are hard. With so much bursting at the seams to live, there is more with the potential to die. The dying is inevitable.
But if we’re here, we’re here for all of it. And isn’t it something – if not everything– to be awake?
Good luck out there, bravely facing all that breaks your heart.
In three days, it will be the five-year anniversary of this newsletter. I don’t know what to do to celebrate this. Anything? Nothing? I thought something would have come to me by now — five is a big one, right? — but nothing has. Do you have any ideas?
Last minute, but I’ll be in conversation tonight with Meg Richardson about her amazing new novel Paradise Pawn at City Lit Books. I’d love to see you there!
i did an episode of the podcast “It’s Gonna Be Fine” about polyamory and non-monogamy and that kinda thing, and it was fun and great! Here’s the Spotify link.
Sammi and I had a daily cartoon online for The New Yorker this week!
Shelby wrote a long comment last week that I loved every single moment of, but here’s my favorite part, and I cannot stop thinking about it: “I taught myself a mental trick back when I lived in China and felt very homesick, which was to imagine how my future self would be nostalgic for my time in China. And then I would go out and eat some amazing Chinese food (the variety of which is almost unfathomable when all you’ve experienced is American Chinese restaurants), and bank the memories for Future Shelby. I’m glad Past Shelby did that. I hope you’re glad Past Sophie took all those daily baths, and can spend now enjoying all of the things that Future Sophie will miss. Maybe the trick will work for you too?”
So, what I have decided I am going to do with my four days to myself — and I have already started doing this — is re-caulk the bathtub. The caulk was… black with mold. Just, next level mold. And there’s mold everywhere. I keep finding more and more and more mold. I PUT MY CHILD IN THAT PLACE EVERY NIGHT.
See, this is the kind of thing I write and then someone emails me and is like, “YOU ARE A BAD PERSON.” Like… I know? I’m trying to be better here?
In non-sad yard news, the bean arch is killing it this year. We made the bean arch because of Joe Pera Talks To You, and every year it’s fine, but this year it’s a beast.
The best summer thing I have discovered, thanks to my friend Megan, is Night Beach, where you go to the beach at night. This is next level good and important, and if you live near a natural body of water, I really do entreat you to make sure you do it at least once this summer. You just have to be there at night, and get your head in the water.
What is the best salad?
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