The Bee Sting, Or Memory: The Valuable Friend
Memory is an unreliable companion, but a valuable friend at times as well. I’ve never grasped at a bee more than once, for example. There’s an unflattering snapshot of the aftermath, somewhere in the familial archives, that will almost certainly be retrieved someday, if only for a few laughs and teasing prods from my brothers and sister.
It must have been 1965, just before we left the house in Torrance to move to Buena Park. I remember this house, somewhat. It was elegant and contained many secrets, rooms I never entered, hidden meanings in the adult things around — giant sized clothes, dad’s black leather briefcase, mom’s array of purses and multicolored shoes — all interesting objects that comforted me and captured my interest.
The backyard was good enough size, an expanse of grass stretching out, beige cinder block walls enclosing us in suburban safety. It was the red bottlebrush plant on the left side as you looked out towards the back neighbor that contained the offending creature. Not that I knew it was offending at the time. And therein lay the problem.
I was and still am fascinated by novelty, the novelty of color, of motion, of design. This thing that fluttered so strangely, clumsily on the oddly shaped flowers of this queer foliage — it still seems so bizarre to me that nature could conjure something so cute and funny, as I must have seen it, balanced on the red spikey flower. Yet it was dangerous too, as I soon found out, as I grasped it in my hand and felt the immediate prick.
Mom was nearby, to be sure, I still remember her comforting touch and concern. Yet comfort enough it wasn’t. The pain was real. Words and tender beauty couldn’t stop this fear, the terrible mystery of whatever it was that happened. Would it happen again? As my brain surged with adrenaline and my heart pounded (as I imagine now, I don’t actually remember) all of my being seemed encompassed in the throbbing fear of pain and horror.
With my brothers nearby, Philip was surely fascinated, only 3 at the time but ever the naturalist and empiricist, surely studied the scene with a developing scientific detachment. My relationship with pain and someone who fancied himself an expert hovering over me had already begun, though I was only a toddler. I vaguely remember mom using long fingernails, coated in vivid red, matching the red of the lipstick that she customarily wore, as was the fashion of the day. It was a different red than the ginger of her hair, which was always in the latest fashions of the creative 60s, often a beehive, ironically.
It was probably Dad, who even on this probable Sunday (because he never relaxed, but Sunday was the most likely day he’d be in the backyard) snapped the picture, with the technology pressed against his black thick framed glasses. He also was very fashionable, but today his look would be somewhat square.
I say vaguely and probably, because memory is a fickle friend. This is all speculation, except for the sharp pain, that I still remember. It didn’t last long, but the fear did. Perhaps it’s somewhat instinctual, the product of evolution, but I still, at the age of 56, have an out proportioned fear of bees. I avoid them as if it might feel like the end of the world, which I’m sure to me it did at the time. Yet sometimes, my curiosity almost gets the best of me, and I wonder, was it really that terrible? What would happen if I grabbed or tempted that bee right there, would I be overcome with shock and horror as I was as a toddler? My courage is never equal to the task, due to the memory of that excruciating moment 54 years ago.
