Honey

He lands on the petal with near-perfect grace, inherently understanding its fragility. The stem wobbles slightly under his weight and then stills. His patterned body, framed by the brilliant yellow of his new perch, remains steady as he carries out the tedious and noble work of his days. Moments later, having successfully collected his treasure, he raises his wings and departs.

My daughter, who has come to help me water flowers, watches it all with studious eyes, her sun-kissed hair still wet from the evening’s bath.

“What was that?” she asks, her gaze still fixed on the empty petal – as if looking away will somehow erase the memory.

“That,” I reply, “was a bee gathering a special ingredient for his honey. The ingredient is called nectar and he can only get it from flowers like the ones in our garden. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Will he give it back?” she questions warily.

Her forehead is scrunched in troubled consternation, visions of her little sister stealing toys without returning them tiptoeing through her busy mind, and I hear her thoughts with acute precision: If you take something, you must give it back. It’s mom’s rule, nature’s law.

I think back to earlier that day, when I spent nearly an hour setting up the kiddie pool in our backyard so that she and her sister could spend thirty seconds playing in it before declaring their boredom. I think about the twenty minutes I wasted preparing their lunch, two veggie chicken wraps met with adamant disapproval. I think about how the one-year-old got such a kick out of yanking off my glasses when I asked her for a kiss, how the three-year-old couldn’t wait two minutes for Aladdin while I attempted to find and readjust them.

The truth is, I think, sometimes you don’t get it back. Sometimes after days of endless giving, you have nothing to take in return. Not a trophy or a medal or even a pinch of the nectar stolen from your very own pockets. Sometimes you’re just a flower sucked dry of its magic.

Yet I trust, like so many mothers before me, that the aching hollowness is not in vain – that my children simply need time to convert my gifts into something richer and sweeter before returning them to me. It is, after all, mom’s rule – nature’s law.

“Oh, yes,” I finally say, assuaging my tiny gardener’s worries with a playful squirt of the hose, “he’ll give it back. It just takes time.”

Bee

Comments

  1. says

    That first paragraph reads like a poem! So beautiful. And I really needed to read this today. My oldest has been a real moster these past few days. I feel like all of my effort is for nothing, but I just love the idea of our kids (eventually) converting all of it into something “richer and sweeter”.

  2. says

    The story ” Honey” is one of my favorites so far. ( but then again, I have numerous). Always look forward to you next Adventure Story!

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