When You’re the Bee in the Story.

I found this story the other day. I wrote it back in 2014. I was still in Los Angeles. Floundering. Unsure what to do with the next phase of my life. Uncertain what the times ahead were offering.

Perhaps you feel this way today. Perhaps you need some comforting. Knowing that where you are today, won’t be where you’ll be ten years from now. Or, perhaps you feel as I do when I read it today. Like I am now the bee in the story.

The California morning sun blazed on my shoulders as I sipped my hot green tea in my office.

My office, which is actually my back porch, is my special place in the morning. My cat, Iris, arrives to the office before I do, and sits on her chair like a time clock, alerting and reminding me that the sun will only be in the right position from 8:00 am to 9:30 am, and I’d better hurry and punch in if I want to enjoy this part of the morning.

This is the time we both like.

She yawns and settles into the chair, the sun covering her like a blanket as she curls into a little black ball; and I sit opposite her while the sun massages my shoulders and rubs my temples and sometimes even holds my hand while I contemplate life, bills, freelancing, family, more bills, global warming and other things.

I click, point and skim through the headlines of the day on my lap top; I should be spending my time otherwise.

I was reading of other’s triumphs and trials and bizarro-ness all while purposefully avoiding my own life when I heard a buzzing above my head.

My porch is enclosed by a clear plastic covering with grooves, which if painted blue, might resemble the type of rippled ocean waves caused by a passing motor boat that are choppy and tiny by the time they reach your feet. There, outside, in one of the plastic grooves was a honey bee. It was flitting about; its fuzzy black and yellow body hopping from one buzzing wing to another as though it were on a hot griddle.

I rose, and peering under it through the plastic roof, I could see its tiny feelers frantically waving up and down in distress.

I could tell it was dying. I’ve skimmed enough headlines to know.

I felt helpless as its legs slowly started to curl underneath itself in that awkward triangular way. I reached up to gingerly touch the bee through the hard plastic, hoping I was offering some sort of comfort as its head dipped forward into a ball.

I held my grandma’s hand as she lay dying in the hospital of ovarian cancer. I wasn’t there for her final breath, but I was there while she withered away with each passing breath that eventually lead her to the final one.

The bee stopped moving so quickly. The buzzing grew quiet. I kept my fingers there. Hoping. But like the precious time with grandma, where I hoped something else would happen other than what was inevitable and beyond my control, it expired.