Twelve years ago, a day to remember . . .
Remembering is as Remembering Does
Twelve years ago, a day to remember . . .
Author: marianbeaman
Plain Mennonite girl turns fancy while mining stories to preserve a legacy
Purple Passages iii with Pictures
Writing & Stories
4.10.99 Why stories are so effective:
The best stories begin as mental pictures which turn into personal mirrors before they become insightful windows through which we’re able to view life with greater clarity and understanding. Anonymous
12.15.95 I like everything about writing except the paperwork! Novelist Peter de Vries
9.9.00 I feel 10 times smarter writing on the computer. My student, ENC 1101
Travel
There’s no cure like travel
To help you unravel
The worries of living today.
When the poor brain is cracking
There’s nothing like packing
A suitcase and sailing away.
Cole Porter – Anything Goes.
7.15.13 The only real voyage of self-discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing it with new eyes. Marcel Proust
8.14.99 Distance lends enchantment to the view . . . . Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Ozarks
10.22.96 I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. Thoreau
7.28.90 The trip to heaven will be easy because I have sent my heart on ahead. Loretta Lynn
White-Water Rafting
White water rafting, especially level 3 or 4, is a grand metaphor for life:
1. Trust your Guide.
2. Stay IN the boat.
3. Have fun!
Dancing with the Stars
4.16.99 I don’t try to be better than anyone else. I try to be better than myself. Mikhael Baryshnikov, dancer
5.13.90 If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Thoreau
5.10.99 And frame your mind to mirth and merriment / Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life. Wm. Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
A merry heart doeth good like medicine. Proverbs 17:22.
Time and Happiness
3.17.00 Human time does not turn in a circle. It runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy; happiness is the longing for repetition. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
12.28.89 How plotless real life was [is]! Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
5.9.90 Don’t worry about the meaning of life; pursue meaning in life every day. Robert Fulghum
12.19.99 You are only one thought away from a good feeling! Sheil Krystal quoted in Rick Carlson’s Happiness
9.10.13 Sybil, in my book says, “Sometimes, the greatest gift you can give someone is the freedom to pursue their own happiness.” Red Clay and Roses SK Nicholls
Which quotes do you agree with?
Disagree?
Your turn: Share one you would add to the themes.
School Daze: Songs We Sang
Valentine parties, Easter parades, Hallowe’en fun houses in the basement, Christmas programs, we had them all, but those were special occasions. At Rheems Elementary, a two-room school, we had our daily ritual: Bell ringing from the school-house steeple (always by a boy), Bible reading, the Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and then singing before lessons began:
This is My Father’s World, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, and Home on the Range were staples in our little golden songbook. But many of the lyrics we sang would be considered insulting to various ethnic and racial groups today. For example, Old Solomon Levi, playing to the stereotype of the wily Jewish merchant:
My name is Solomon Levi
At my store in Salem Street,
There’s where you find your coats and vests,
And ev’rything else that’s neat:
I’ve second-handed Ulsterettes,
And ev’rything else that’s fine;
For all the boys — they trade with me,
At one hundred and forty-nine.
Chorus.
Oh, Mister Levi, Levi, tra, la, la, la.
Poor Solomon Levi, tra, la, la, la, la, la, la, la
Next, we might sing My Old Kentucky Home with what was then dubbed the negro dialect: “The sun shines bright in on my old Kentucky Home, / Tis summer, the darkies are gay.”
What! “Darkies are gay . . . “? Innocent of the dissonance in the words we would discover later, we sang the chorus at the top of our lungs:” Weep no more, my lady. Oh, weep no more to-day; / We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home. / For the old Kentucky home, far away.” For sure, Paula Deen would be safe in such a culture.
The dialect continued when we belted out Dixie: “I wish I was in de land ob cotton, / Old times dar am not forgotten, Look a-way! Look a-way! Look a-way! Dixie Land.” There was even a winking nod to obesity in one of the stanzas: “Dar’s buckwheat cakes, an’ Injun batter, / Makes you fat or a little fatter . . . .
And then there was the wistful: When You and I Were Young, Maggie, and My Grandfather’s Clock, sung by youngsters that had no conception of aging or mortality.
Graduating to Junior High in 7th grade, the singing before lessons stopped, but my classmates and I were introduced to both highbrow and lowbrow music. The official music teacher, Miss Enterline, fresh out of college, enthralled us with Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and cajoled us to join her gender-separate choruses: Melo-men and Melo-dears. Then there was my homeroom and typing teacher, Mrs. Elsie Care. Her door name-plate said “Mrs.” but when she came to school in a dress with a zipper down the back, she asked a student to help out with the zippering up. Where was Mr. Care, I wondered: Traveling? Too busy to bother? Was she separated, or even divorced? I noticed someone always helped her out of her sartorial dilemma soon enough. Though she taught business courses, she insisted that we learned the words to “16 Ton,” even writing them on the blackboard with her large, loopy handwriting. At the time I thought it strange, but, endearingly, she had introduced us to pop culture:
Tennessee Ernie Ford
Mrs. Care signed my yearbook with shorthand, which I neither cared about nor understood, but her quirkiness is etched in memory. . . Mrs. Elsie G. Care, the “G” for Gioconda, woman of mystery and intrigue.
Ode to Tomatoes: Plant, Pick, Eat
I never think of myself as a Daddy’s girl, because I get along with Mom better. But there I am in plain daylight grinning as I ride the tractor with Daddy. We’re cultivating the 9 acres of land in Bainbridge for the next tomato crop. I stand on the tractor’s floor board with the evenly spaced holes for draining mud and moisture. Hanging onto the back of the tractor seat, we climb a grade — putt-putt-putt-putt-putt — and then back on level ground, mom snaps our picture. It’s a warm day in May, and I see beads of sweat on Daddy’s neck even though there’s a slight breeze blowing.
Daddy wears many hats in his farm supply business. He mans the parts department, hires mechanics, markets his equipment, and when a new tractor, harvester, or cultivator arrives, he walks across the street in Rheems to the railroad tracks at the appointed time and pulls a new tractor from a PA Railroad freight car that stops for just minutes to make the delivery.
He is so proud of his new tractor. Either he has ordered it for a farmer from the Minneapolis Moline plant, or he has someone in mind to sell it to. I hear him on the phone now with a prospect: “Hello, this is Longenecker from Rheems . . . .“ Everyone in northern Lancaster County knows him, so he doesn’t have to say “Longenecker Farm Supply” or explain who he is.
If there are Urban Mamas in Lancaster city, we don’t know about them. Everyone we know eats fresh and local from farms or country gardens. Cherries in May, peas in June, and sweet corn and tomatoes all summer long. In pea season, we gather around the kitchen table and eat a light supper of peas from the garden in a huge bowl. The china serving bowl I see now has embossed pink flowers and gilt edging. Of course, Mom pours lightly browned butter on top. “Butter always makes it better,” she says. After our fill of peas, peas, peas, there might be Breyer’s butter brickle ice cream and pretzels.
And sometimes, tomato sandwiches. Now, you ask, why would you eat tomato sandwiches when you were in the tomato patch all summer? Wouldn’t you be sick and tired of them? Well, not the way Mother fixes them:
How to make the Perfect Tomato Sandwich, according to Mother Longenecker:
- 2 slices of bread
- Spread one side of each with mayonnaise, always Hellman’s
- Layer medium-sliced, fresh tomatoes from the field (none of this harvest-green and then spray-with-preservatives business from the grocery store.)
- Sprinkle some sugar on top of the tomatoes—and there you are!
If you are counting calories and watching your waistline, this is not your dish. But try it just this once. It’s kind of sloppy: bright red tomato juice oozes out and puddles your plate, nourishing your senses and soul.
. . . at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.
excerpt from “Ode to Tomatoes,” Pablo Neruda
Breakfast is Served — with an Oops!
Before I dashed off to my college classes each morning, I had a 10-minute oasis of breakfast time around 6:30. With a modest-size repast of tea and lemon, bagel with peanut butter or cream cheese + a piece of fruit, I told God, “Thank you for this food and the leisure to enjoy it in.” Why would I even think to call it leisure? I had just 10 minutes before I bolted out the door, joined the traffic on Beach Boulevard, and rolled my car onto campus at 7:00 a.m. Busy day ahead!
Now in my writing phase of life, at 7:00 I may tune in to 20-minute yoga session, pre- or post-breakfast. It just depends.
But now my breakfasts are more abundant and leisurely. Well, . . . most of the time.
Breakfast time includes a spiritual dimension:
First, CLEANSING . . .
Then, moments of SILENCE
Silence, however brief (then) or longer (now). . . requires meaningful retreat from the hurly-burly busy-ness of life.
In his memoir, The Chosen, Chaim Potok’s main character, Reuven, speaks of the enlightenment his friend’s father, Reb Saunders, a Hasidic rabbi, imparts about the restorative value of long stretches of quiet: “. . . “I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it.” And later Reuven’s brilliant friend Danny admits: “My father taught me with silence, . . . “ so I would not grow up with a mind having no soul.
Now take a deep breath . . . read s l o w l y :
When you are faithful in [silent meditation] . . .
you will slowly experience yourself in a deep way.
Because in this useless hour in which
you do nothing “important” or urgent
you have to come to terms with your basic powerlessness,
you have to feel your fundamental inability
to solve your or other people’s problems
or to change the world.
When you do not avoid that experience but live through it,
you will find out that your many projects, plans,
and obligations becomes less urgent, crucial, and important
and lose their power over you.
Abbot John Eudes Bamberger to Henry Nouwen (Quoted in Fil Anderson’s Running on Empty, a book about living restoratively in “a world stuck on fast forward.” 73)
Next, MEDITATION . . .
Take another deep breath, read, and reflect
Grandson Patrick, my less pious stand-in for “Meditation.” He is reading from his Grandpa’s Bible the story of one of the shipwrecks of Apostle Paul he learned about in Vacation Bible School.
Happy to say, I haven’t heard the phone ring yet, so there’s even time for another cup!
OOPS!
You were waiting for an OOPS! and here it comes. Life doesn’t always go as planned. Interruptions happen. And frequently. There is often a need to revert to Plan B. (See again Southern Friends Meet PA Dutch Dish)
Fil (really, not a misspelling) Anderson, again, in Running on Empty quotes Author Robert Benson, Living Prayer (page 81) who has devised a theory of life he dubs the “Rule of 21.”
Twenty-one minutes is the amount of time that one can go without being interrupted by a telephone call, a knock at the door, or an attack from cyberspace . . . .
Twenty-one days seems to be the maximum number of days that one’s life can go smoothly. The average is four, but the limit is twenty-one I think. It’s hard to live for more than twenty-one days without a car breaking down, a trip being cancelled, a family member getting sick, a pet dying, a tire going flat, a deadline being missed, or some other thing that scatters all of one’s otherwise neatly arranged ducks.
While I’m writing this post, there have been several hiccups in the rhythm of my own life. Specters in the form of medical, institutional, and financial needs have reared their unwelcome heads either in my own or our extended family. And it’s been, I gasp, about 21 hours — give or take a few!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here’s the menu. Choose one or two!
Do you eat breakfast? Is it a meal eaten on the run? More leisurely?
What are your spiritual adaptations before, during, or after breakfast?
What do you do when your plans go awry? Share a sure-fire coping strategy.
Splash: Another Time, A Different Tub
In Florida, most people take baths once a day. It’s too hot not to. And it’s a safe bet most people in contemporary America take more than one bath a week.
Not so in the olden days. Mildred Armstrong Kalish writes of her family’s once-a-week bathing in her chock-full-of-detail memoir of growing up on an Iowa Farm during the Depression and vividly describes the extra bath needed on days working in the hay-field:
When dusk came after a day like this [reaping and storing hay], Mama would fetch a steaming kettle of water from the kitchen stove and bring it out to the porch where, during the summer months, we set up a washing station which consisted of a wooden bench, an enamel wash basin, clean towels, a mirror, and a pail of fresh water for drinking or to temper the hot water. She started with us girls, giving us a soaping from head to toe and sending us, towels and nightgowns in hand and naked as jaybird, across the grassy lawn to the windmill. Once there, Sis and I pumped pails of refreshing cold water and doused each other all over until we fairly tingled. After we dried ourselves, we donned our cotton nighties and ran back to the house and up to bed. We would be dead to the world in minutes.
In the Longenecker family, mirrors, pumps, and windmills were not involved in the bathing process, but we did bathe once a week whether we needed it or not—usually on a Saturday night before Sunday church. The exceptions were a visit to the doctor or getting rid of ickiness after sickness. Then we called the bath a “rinse off.”
Before our house had a “real” hot water heater, there was an apparatus in the cellar that could have heated water year round. But it was not used in the summer because “It’s just too hot to run that thing when it’s so hot outside already!” So June – August or September, our bath water was heated in a tea kettle or large pan on the kitchen stove and carted in buckets upstairs to the bathroom. Baths were taken in the order of cleanliness, or lack thereof. Usually bath time started early Saturday evening with my sister Jean and Janice, the two youngest, together in the tub with a fragrant bar of Ivory soap, the soap that floats! Soon it was my turn, then Mother, and finally Daddy, a farm equipment mechanic, who was the dirtiest of all.
After all the baths, the 99.44/100 % pure Ivory was made murky with all the build-up of grime, dyeing tub water a charcoal-ish, murky tone and a film of grease on top. It would take more than one scrubbing with BAB-O to restore the porcelain shine, for sure.
Did we get clean? I am sure youngest sister Jean did and probably Janice too. Were we frugal? Yes, and to a fault.
Let’s Talk: Your thoughts please!
What about your baths as a child? Any particular products you remember using?
What else are you curious about growing up Mennonite in the 1950s? What other topics would interest you?
Mennonite Flashback II: Circles and Tubs
CIRCLES:
I am in a small room of our church standing in a circle of women and girls in the presence of our Bishop and Deacons who will ask each of us 2 questions:
* Are you in harmony with the rules and regulations of the Mennonite Church?
* Are you at peace with God and your fellow man?
We are all plain, wearing coverings on our heads and simple dresses with capes, and expected to answer “Yes” to each question and answer them truthfully with a pure heart. I wonder though about Della and Doris in the group. During the last Council Meeting, as this question is called, they each answered “As much as possible” when queried about their willingness to keep church rules. I have noticed that they always push the envelope on fashion, wearing dresses with collars with piping, expensive fabrics, and shoes just a hair below chic. Their answers were acceptable apparently last time, for here they are back again in our close-knit circle.
It is a week or two before Communion at Bossler Mennonite Church, and we assemble in small groups, men and women separately to be examined in preparation for one of our most important ordinances, Communion (Article II, Section 2 of the Lancaster Conference Rules 1968). A memorial to Christ’s suffering and death, church members who have professed faith in Christ, stand in a line to partake of the sacred emblems of Christ’s broken body and shed blood symbolized by a morsel of bread and a sip of grape juice (never wine!) from a communal goblet. We share a common faith and common heritage, many of us branches of the same family tree at Bossler’s Mennonite Church: Garbers, Hesses, Kraybills, Kreiders, Weavers, Wengers, Zimmermans, and of course, Longeneckers.
Our church fathers feel responsible that none of their flock observe Communion unworthily. And we members fear damnation if we have unconfessed sin in our lives. Our pastor intones from the pulpit these words: I Cor. 11:29 “For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”
Next Sunday, we sing lovely hymns a capella as we circle row by row around the sanctuary to observe the ordinance of Communion: “Bread of Heaven,” “Alas! And Did My Saviour Bleed?” “Saw Ye My Saviour?” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” are among the oft-sung music selections:
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
Like the cycles of the seasons, spring and fall, we repeat the circles of Council Meeting and Communion year after year.
TUBS:
After the Communion service in the church, men and women gather separately in their vestibules to observe the Feet Washing Ordinance, Article II, Section 3 of our Conference rules, according to the gospel of John 13:1-9. Our fathers, uncles, and grandpas bring in oblong, galvanized basins of luke-warm water and then quickly disappear.
There is an awkward moment when I look around for a partner. My hope is to find someone else close in age. But a time or two I have been stuck with an older woman – bad breath and chin hairs, really off-putting for a girl of fourteen.
But I’m lucky to pair up this time with Gladys Garber, one of my teen-age friends. We take turns: each tying the terry cloth apron to our waistlines and washing each other’s feet. No scrubbing is involved here, just a gentle hand-pouring of water over one foot and then the other, drying each foot separately, tenderly.
But there’s more. After the foot-washing is finished, It is now time to observe the last ordinance, the Holy Kiss, an “expression of fervent love” (Romans 16:16). And, no, it’s not a peck on the cheek!
It was Socrates who said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” It is not possible to accuse good Mennonite folk of that transgression. They are a people who share a common heritage, a common faith, and a common goal of a pure and holy life.
Mennonite Flashback I: Rings and Gloves
Rings
CareBear Cliff has given me a diamond ring for Easter, baked in a blueberry muffin with a plastic bunny-rabbit stick on top. It is my first piece of jewelry ever and I’m 25 years old. Imagining everyone is as thrilled as I am, I flash the sparkling stone in front of Grandma Longenecker.
“Look, Grandma!” I say ecstatically, offering my hand for her to inspect the glittering diamond solitaire in a silver setting.
She turns ashen-faced, at the sight. At the moment, she says nothing but her eyes communicate betrayal. I’ve betrayed my heritage and my family values, I quickly gather.
Though she knows I am straddling the fence between Mennonite life and something else, she still sees me as a plain girl, who once adhered to the strict teachings of the Lancaster Mennonite Conference rules of 1968, especially Article III, Section 6 on Attire: “ . . . brethren and sisters shall not use not wear jewelry or other ornaments.”
My joy bubble has popped and I slowly withdraw my hand, which has figuratively been slapped.
Imagine my surprise and bafflement when years later, she sits my sisters and I down around the kitchen table and produces 3 ring boxes. “Now where did they come from?” I wonder. Apparently hiding in her dresser drawer for decades.
Before her marriage to Grandpa Henry, she was fancy, and wore all the regalia of a fashionable Victorian woman: hats with plumes, dresses with bustle and beadwork—and even a bracelet and RINGS! Now Janice gets Grandma’s opal engagement ring, Jean gets her larger amethyst ring, and I am bequeathed a lovely one with a smaller amethyst and four seed pearls. Well, I declare.
And Gloves
Nowadays casual Fridays last all week long, Presidential candidates have ditched the white shirt and tie to look cool, and ladies don’t wear gloves anymore except for warmth in the wintertime. No longer a fashion statement, women’s gloves appear as curiosities in the dressy section of antique shops or museums.
In my collection of old gloves, the plain and fancy mingle. Guess which pair was worn by one of my attendants at our wedding. The choices are at 10:00 o’clock, 12:00 o’clock, and 3:00 o’clock.
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A Scrapbook: Bonnets, Bandannas, and Sex Ed
Bonnets
“Tie your head shut!” – An oft-heard admonition from my mother, my Aunt Ruthie, and Grandma Longenecker. Translation: If you tie your head shut, you won’t get sick with colds, sinus trouble, what not. And so our heads are tied shut with bonnets and bandannas and then adorned with the Mennonite prayer veiling. In other words, there is usually something besides my hair on top of my head or around my ears from babyhood on up.
My photo at 10 months old features a machine-sewn miniature version of a bonnet that I remember my Grandma wearing in the garden.
On billboards we see the little blond girl advertising a fake way to get sun-tanned. “Don’t be a paleface,” she says. But we don’t need to buy Coppertone lotion to make our skins dark. We get our tans the honest way. Our skin turns brown naturally in the summer playing outside or working in the garden or tomato patch. To tell the truth, we depend on the sun-bonnet or the grace of God to not scorch our tough Swiss skins.
More Bonnets & Bandannas @ Work
Like Mildred Armstrong Kalish in her must-read memoir Little Heathens depicting rural life in Iowa during the Depression, we in Pennsylvania Dutch land are not offended or shocked by four-letter words that are part of our daily life either: cook, bake, wash, iron, dust, pick tomatoes, sweet corn, beans, or sweet potatoes.
WIth skirts and scarves we plant, hoe, and pick tomatoes in Bainbridge, PA. For details, see Tomato Girl, parts I and II.
School and Sex Ed
Surrounded by girls with curls visiting the Elizabethtown Library, I’m the one to the left with a floral bandanna, keeping my head tied shut, just like Mother expected.
With all its books, this library is an impressive step up from the small bookcase at Rheems Elementary School. Yes, there is a library at Bossler Mennonite Church too, which is where I begin to get my sex education. In a blue and white book with a glossy, stiff cover, I discover that when a mommy and daddy “got very close” a baby was created. “Now what does “get very close” mean?” I wonder. Later I un-earth a book entitled Sane Sex Life with a red, black and white dust cover in my parents’ bedroom. Hidden in their wardrobe among sweaters, long-johns, and mothballs, this book adds a new dimension to my literary diet of Lippincott textbooks, church catechism, and storybooks. Whenever I think my mother won’t hear the sound of the wardrobe door open, I sneak a look at its realistic drawings (gasp!) and mind-boggling explanations, astonished that such a books exists.
Yes, I keep these strange revelations under my hat, bandanna, prayer veiling–whatever I am wearing on my head.
And Play
Prayer coverings take no vacations. Because a woman is apt to pray any time or any place, the Church (Lancaster Mennonite Conference) ordains that we stay veiled morning, noon, and night.
What special outfits do you remember from your childhood or teen-age years?
Did they make you feel attractive? Out of place?
It’s No Secret: The Life of Bees and Beamans
The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean whole new orbit. Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed. Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees pages 1, 2
If you’ve read Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, you know that bees are a metaphor for the flight Lily Melissa Owens takes to escape a mother-less house (except for nanny Rosaleen) and the domination of an angry father to find a true family and home. In the process, she learns the truth of her mother’s past, finds a hive of new mothers, and discovers her own identity. In other words, she discovers her true self, the whole point of a good coming-of-age novel.
Substitute a different date and a different age, and you have my story with major variations. Unlike Lily, I had a caring family with a highly functioning Mother, but I lived the life of a Lancaster County Mennonite girl, separate from mainstream culture. I envisioned a more colorful life that would offer excitement and surprise. Thus, the bees in my bonnet (literally, a bonnet) propelled me to explore life beyond what I believed was the sheltered, nurturing, but confining, boundaries of my Mennonite upbringing. “What would happen if I sampled the honey from a different hive?” I wondered.
No, I didn’t have a jar of bees on my dresser like Lily, but I did recognize an inner voice saying to me, “Marian, your jar is open.” And off I buzzed to a different state, a changed outward appearance, and eventually a new name.
In the process, I landed in another city (Charlotte, NC) in a house with two young women, who, like Lily’s three Boatwright sisters in the Pink House, groomed me for a different life. A life with bright colors, loose hair, fancy dresses but not jarring me away from deeply held values.
Like Lily Melissa Owens, I have sampled the honey of good experience along with the vinegar of trials. Of course, I like the honey better. Here are some life secrets from the “. . . Life of Bees.”
1. IT’S BETTER TO BE SWEET THAN SOUR!
“We lived for honey. We swallowed a spoonful in the morning to wake us up and one at night to put us to sleep. We took it with every meal to calm the mind, give us stamina, and prevent fatal disease. We swabbed ourselves in it to disinfect cuts or heal chapped lips. It went in our baths, our skin cream, our raspberry tea and biscuits. Nothing was safe from honey. . . . [It] was the ambrosia of the gods and the shampoo of the goddesses.” (84)
August [Boatwright] said beeswax “could make your fishing line float, your button thread stronger, your furniture shinier, your stuck window glide, and your irritated skin glow like a baby’s bottom. Beeswax was a miracle cure for everything.” (84)
2. OBSERVE ETIQUETTE.
What works in the bee yard works in the world. “Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot: wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat . . . . If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bees’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.” (92)
3. USE YOUR SMARTS.
“People don’t realize how smart bees are, even smarter than dolphins. Bees know enough geometry to make row after row of perfect hexagons, angles so accurate you’d think they used rulers. They take plain flower juice and turn it into something everyone in the world loves to pour on biscuits.” (137)
4. NOTICE THAT OTHERS ALSO HAVE IMPORTANT ROLES TO PLAY; YOU’RE NOT ALWAYS THE QUEEN BEE! In the bee kingdom there are nest-builders, field bees with good navigation skills to gather nectar and pollen, nurse bees, and mortician bees. At the extreme ends: drones and, oh, yes, the Queen Bee with her attendants. (148-149)
5. COMMUNICATE!
“The whole fabric of honey bee society depends on communication—on an innate ability to send and receive messages, to encode and decode information.” Gould, James L. and Carol Grant Gould. The Honey Bee, quoted in The Secret Life of Bees (165)
6. YOU ARE CAPABLE OF MORE THAN YOU THINK.
The worker bee is just over a centimeter long and weighs only about sixty milligrams; nevertheless, she can fly with a load heavier than herself. Gould, James L. and Carol Grant Gould. The Honey Bee, quoted in The Secret Life of Bees, (256)
7. ENJOY BREATH-TAKING BEAUTY!
According to August, if you’ve never seen a cluster of beehives first thing in the morning, you’ve missed the eighth wonder of the world. Picture these white bees tucked under pine tees. The sun will slant through the branches, shining in the sprinkles of dew drying on the lids. There will be a few hundred bees doing laps around the hive boxes, just warming up, but mostly taking their bathroom break, as bees are so clean they will not soil the inside of their hives. From the distance it will look like a big painting . . . in a museum, but museums can’t capture the sound. Fifty feet away you will hear it, a humming that sounds like it came from a different planet. At thirty feet your skin will start to vibrate. The hair will lift on your neck. Your head will say, Don’t go any farther, but your heart will send you straight into the hum, where you will be swallowed by it. You will stand there and think, I am in the center of the universe, where everything is sung to life. (286)
Bee Video
Create a buzz!
Was there a time in your life when the jar of your life opened, and you flew out of it into a different orbit?
Like Lily Owens in the novel, have you found a hive of friends to nurture you?
Who is the queen bee in your life story? Well, it could be a king or a prince too, I guess.
All quotes: Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.
Plain and Fancy 