Bees, Knees, & Transitions

Colin Meloy is singing the soundtrack of my daughters’ childhoods this morning, much as John Denver sang mine.  It’s time to say goodbye to yet another summer.  This morning I return to work and on Thursday school begins.  It’s been a summer of transitions and reflection.

Last week we made a very difficult family decision to have our beloved pet cat put down due to increasing behavioral issues (the technical term is inappropriate elimination).  We have each made our peace with losing Lucie, but there are moments of acute loss that each suffer, often at unexpected times.  To walk into the space where her food dishes were causes my heart to drop, every time, and my heart seems to beat out, “she’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone.”  The evenings and mornings when she’d be especially cuddly and purry seem so empty to us now.  Every now and then, I think I see her out of the corner of my eye, curled up in one of her usual places.  Emptiness seems the primary description for losing a pet.  Lucie occupied such a presence in home and heart.  She was an exceedingly social cat, greeting visitors and needing to be wherever we were.  We miss her so.

As if called to fill this void, thousands of bees swarmed into my in-laws’ garage the day after we said goodbye to Lucie.  Dan contacted friends who are beekeepers to assess the situation.  They said the bees might leave on their own to find a more suitable home, but if not, they’d capture and relocate them on Sunday.  The bees were still there the next morning, a mass of solid bees the size of a basketball, clinging to one another and the ceiling of the garage.  Peggy and Dave arrived and suited up, explained the plan, and talked with such love about the bees.  Something clicked inside me and I was intrigued and fascinated and immediately wanted these bees placed on our property.  I asked impulsively if we could have the bees, and Peggy was delighted that I was a convert and explained what I’d need to do to prepare a space for the bees.

Sunday night, the bees were moved into a box on our property, under a juniper tree south of our house.  From our deck we check on them multiple times a day, using binoculars, observing patterns in their comings and goings.  We’ve ordered our own bee suits, have a pile of bee books from the local library, and have had conversations with our neighbors to make them aware.  We’ve spoken to several people who are or were beekeepers who have been so supportive and willing to share advice.  We definitely feel part of a community of environmental stewards – the beekeeping community is welcoming and eager.  There are moments when I am watching the bees when a paraphrase of Bogie’s line from Casablanca pops into my head:  Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, these bees buzzed into mine…  I’ve never felt quite so obsessed and concerned about anything like I do about these bees.  Truly, they are incredibly low maintenance, and in fact do their thing without human assistance and in spite of human interference, as they’ve done for millennia.  But to provide them a safe place to call home during this time of crisis for their species feels like very important work.  Beekeeping is a lot like parenting, teaching, or gardening, in that my first task is to create and maintain an ideal environment for them to thrive.  I’m learning all I can and hope that this colony will succeed.  If they make enough honey to share with us, that’s an added bonus, and I hope to have plenty for anyone who wants some.  They do appear to be a strong colony and my first glimpse into the bee box two days after their placement showed them to be busy building comb and setting up house, as perfectly as we could hope.

This summer we also replaced our flooring, which required us to move out of the upper floor of our house.  We slept in our camping trailer for a week, our garage and downstairs filled with furniture and boxes.  We spent many days this summer sorting through clothing, toys, and such, deciding what to keep, what to donate, what to pitch.  It was a cathartic process that involved many trips to Goodwill and the Humane Society Thrift Shop to drop off bags and boxes.  Madeleine and Arden said goodbye to numerous toys they’d outgrown.  We repainted their bedroom and still need to hang pictures back on the wall, but it’s mostly back together.  I had the realization that Madeleine has three more summers with us before she heads off to college, and my mind’s been frantic with planning those family vacations we’ve not yet done (Hawaii, Europe, Baja, Washington DC).  Of course, we don’t have to do these family trips before she goes off to college, but she’ll soon have other interests and a summer job.  She did have a small job this summer teaching music reading to a young violinist.  I’m definitely feeling the clock ticking in a way I haven’t before this summer.

Exactly a month before the first day of school, I tore the medial meniscus in my right knee while on a morning run.  I was laid up for about a week during which I had a lot of time to read and think.  I saw an orthopedic surgeon who indicated surgery is my only option for this injury, but that I would be the one to decide when that should occur.  A steroid shot into my knee has given me much mobility and I can do most any activity I want (except hiking and running).  It’s a waiting game at this point to see what I can tolerate.  Just this week I began taking slow walks around the neighborhood, managing to do two miles without much discomfort.  As always, though, an injury or illness makes us take stock since it slows us down to the essentials of life, temporarily, if we’re lucky.

In spite of not being very physically active, I haven’t been writing much this summer, or even this year if I’m honest.  I can’t really pinpoint why, although there is often a sense of overexposure of the self, or feeling as if I’ve revealed or might reveal more of my inner workings than I want.  So this season has been one of inward retreat and renewal.  It takes a lot of physical and emotional energy to exist in this world, even in my cushy, semi-rural existence here in America.  As I gear up for another year in the classroom, I am more grateful than ever that my profession offers this very important and very necessary perk of summers off.  I am refreshed and revived and very much looking forward to the new challenges the school year always brings.  I am grateful, too, for new professional opportunities like coaching Academic Decathlon, and new personal interests like beekeeping, that keep each day fresh.  Dan and I celebrated our 22^nd anniversary last month and some days I feel very old in my bones, very set in my ways as I go about my routines.  But these transitions to new stages, new interests, and new dreams will help to keep us young.  As Gabo said, “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” 

We’ve transitioned from a one-pet household to being stewards for thousands of creatures, from a household with two children to one with two young adults.  I’ve gone from being physically active to slowly working my way back to being able to walk a couple miles.  It’s an adventure, this life, filled at times with heartbreaking detours and unexpected curves, and always, always, always, with changes.  Wishing you some new dreams that will set your heart abuzz.

Something I Thought was for Other People

Today is a historic day.  This morning the SCOTUS ruled that same-sex marriage is constitutional and that states do not have the right to declare otherwise.  I didn’t really expect to see this happen – same-sex marriage legal across the entire country – in my lifetime.  Tears are spilling over as I write this, which surprises me.  I knew that I believed this to be right and good in my heart, but I am shocked at my relief and happiness regarding this decision.

All morning I watched as positive reactions filled my Facebook page.  But probably the most poignant of all was this one, from a dear college friend:

It affected me deeply, but not so much because it shows how it feels when a barrier comes crashing down, which in itself is huge.  Barriers are rarely toppled so decisively.  With a few notable exceptions, like the literal and symbolic barrier of the Berlin Wall coming down, barriers generally come down in such small increments that one day we look up and finally realize that they’re now, somehow, much more surmountable. 

But that’s not why this post, especially, brought me to tears.  This ruling was the removal of a veil and a gag, enabling love and marriage to be a vision that anyone of us can now see as our option.  Think of how seeing yourself as part of a scene allows you to play your role.  This is everything.  Think of the young girls today who can envision themselves as engineers, physicians, astronauts, rather than the limited number of career options available to them a couple generations ago.  Think of children of color who can envision themselves today receiving the education they deserve, free from segregation.  Think of two people in love who can now share the rights and privileges today’s ruling finally permits.

Unless and until you can see yourself as part of the picture, you can’t know how far your dreams extend, how much you can accomplish, that what we can barely fathom in our dreams can indeed come to pass.  This is why MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech still resonates today.  He was planting a vision of a better world in our collective dreams.  Today we moved closer to that dream of equality, which is perhaps even more stirring after the darkness behind last week’s attack in Charleston moved us away from it.

A memory:  When I put on my first pair of glasses as a young girl, I could distinctly see what previously had been blobs and blurs.  I saw with new eyes a new world:  images and words all at once in focus, sharp and clear.  And I was filled with wonder.  This day, yes, feels like that:  filled with wonder and joy that at times we can see tangibly that love is indeed stronger than hate.

Twenty-five Bucks and a Degree in French

I just completed the second stage of an application process to become a volunteer translator for Kiva.  You might have noticed an ad for Kiva on my sidebar here at Chez Cerise.  Kiva is an international microfinance organization which matches borrowers (typically in the developing world) to lenders throughout the globe.  Lenders can peruse lists of borrowers, categorized by location, type of business, length of loan repayment, and more.  Click here to see how it works.  As a lender, I can pledge as little as $25 toward a loan of perhaps a few thousand U.S. dollars that the borrower, a small business owner, can invest in his or her business, and then repay by the end of the term.

Dan and I have made 49 loans over the past several years, totaling $1,125, through Kiva.  At any given time, we have about $250 circulating through various hands.  We’ve loaned money to entrepeneurs in twenty-eight different countries on four continents and have only experienced one default (but our $25 was refunded to us via the lending organization in Peru).  We currently have active loans that are in the repayment phase in Guatemala, Azerbaijan, Ghana, the Philippines, Burkina Faso, and Colombia.  Our daughters each have their own Kiva accounts and have chosen to support specific borrowers as well.  We’ve recommended Kiva to a number of friends and family members who have made their own loans, too.

Quite some time ago, I signed up to become a volunteer translator with Kiva.  A few weeks ago I received an invitation to officially apply, and today I took the next step in the application process.  This step consisted of two parts.  The easy part was the translation test.  I was given sample passages to translate from French to English.  These passages enable the borrower to give a snapshot of his or her business, and often include some details about his or her personal life, which the prospective lenders read in order to learn more about the person or organization receiving the loan.  The second part of the test was more challenging and asked me to evaluate various loan requests for acceptability – really a kind of proofreading and fact checking, or a vetting of the request.  It required me to code various issues I encountered, to identify what sector of business a loan would fall under, and to determine if the loan request was legal and/or accurate based on the information given.

I should learn within a month if I’ve passed this stage of the process.  It’s been a fun one and I hope that I am offered the opportunity to help Kiva in this way.  Click if you’d like to learn more about Kiva, or to sign up to become a lender or to help in any other way.  While any money loaned on Kiva is not considered a tax-deductible donation (because you’ll likely be repaid), Kiva has a very high rating from Charity Navigator, if you want to see where the money actually goes.

The Fire Tower

I am ten or twelve years old, on a camping trip

to the White Mountains of Arizona.  We are

atop a peak, on a metal ladder, eight thousand

feet and counting, climbing up a fire tower, to visit

someone my dad kind of knows.  It’s the sort of

adventure that’s not exactly planned, but not exactly

random.  But why someone would live here, high on the fire tower,

surrounded by nothing but forest, I wonder, and maybe

worry just a little bit.  Because what would someone

do here, all alone, all summer, except for random visitors like us? 

We pause on the metal stairs, rough vertical

slices that catch even the worn treads of my red Keds. 

Through them, below, is the top of

my mother’s head, a vantage I’ve never had,

and the swaying tips of ponderosa.  Above,

shoe soles as my dad and siblings

wheeze and wait for their breath to return, and beyond

them, the square of hanging house, a grey block in the sky.  There’s

nothing we can say, breathless from the climb and

the mountain air, so we keep going up until we

emerge on the narrow catwalk that surrounds this

tiny roost.  The railing is barely substantial enough to

hold us to the structure, but the wind picks ups up and pushes

us back from the brink, holding us against the improbable

building.  We find the door, are admitted, the tower resident

a skinny man with a beard, who shakes my dad’s hand and

they chat.  My siblings explore, and my mother gushes at

the view:  who could fathom so many trees? 

But it is not the man who lives here, perched in the sky, who

captures my attention, nor what’s beyond the windows which wrap

around us, rattling in the wind.  It’s what’s just below the 360 degree view: 

Books, one long shelf of them, stretching from one corner, where

a slender cot is topped with a sleeping bag, past a hotplate and

cans of beans.  All around me, stopping only at the entry and a

narrow closet that might be a bathroom, books.  Books

with cracked and faded spines, lined up, waiting to be chosen,

patient, eternal.  And then it is clear, an epiphany of a

thousand reasons why this man would choose to live in such an

inconvenient place, and I knew at once that I wanted this,

too.  To spend the summer, with no one to interrupt me,

to read and scan the horizon with my myopic eyes, searching

for a plume, and not finding one, return to the horizontal

lines on the page, traveling far from here,

to any place, really, places I have not even yet imagined. 

This place, this tower, like those in books, that I wasn’t be able to

acknowledge as a somewhere I’d inadvertently waited my whole

life to visit until now, until the very moment I’d arrived.

Enlarged Hearts

This week finds one of our small town’s own in the international headlines.  Kayla Mueller, humanitarian aid worker and prisoner of the Islamic State, was killed during airstrikes against her captors by Jordan’s military over the weekend.  The airstrikes were to avenge the death of First Lieutenant Moaz al-Kasasbeh, who was burned alive while trapped in a cage.  The barbarity of al-Kasasbeh’s death and many others at the hands of Islamic State militants has sickened anyone with a heart and a conscience.  Kayla’s death brought the atrocities of the Islamic State to our town’s doorstep.

Prescott is small enough that even though I didn’t know Kayla, I know several people who did.  Our town’s size seems defined by this single degree of separation – just big enough that we don’t know everyone, but small enough that we know-someone-who.  From all accounts, she was a woman with enormous spirit and courage.  She was the type of person who embodied selflessness and who revealed humanity’s best through her actions while helping those who faced humanity’s worst.

As I’ve looked out at my students this week, I’ve felt a sense of unease and dread as I’ve noted the more idealistic among them - those students who have large enough hearts to believe that they can indeed make a difference in what appears to me right now to be a cruel and dark world.  There are shadows reaching across our planet that make me tense and anxious for my daughters’ generation.  And yet I’ve also felt wonder and great hope as I look into the eyes of my students.  I think of that damn starfish story that makes me tear up every time I even reflect upon it in spite of how cynical I feel.  To paraphrase Dr. King, only light can illuminate darkness.

I’ve read Kayla’s letter to her family several times and I’m blown away by the courageous and gracious heart it reveals.  And I am grateful that she existed and that her kind appear, like angels, to those in the most desperate of situations.  “Where is the world?” the people of Syria asked her.  She didn’t have an answer.  We cannot know much of Kayla’s work in Syria, and yet we can imagine that she brought some measure of comfort, and perhaps even joy, to those who needed it most.  Her death does not make sense to me, and I cannot fathom the despair of her family.  In spite of the horror I feel at her senseless death, I can’t help but also be grateful that there are others like her, others who will be inspired and moved by her story to do good, others who will remind us of our humanity by giving of themselves and shining their light into the darkness of the abyss, even if but for a moment.