Waiting for bees

It’s been raining here in New England for days. Yesterday we got 3-5 inches (a real soakah!) and the forecast shows rain or drizzle through Saturday night. One good thing is that we need it. The other good thing is that it may have cured my insomnia, because all I want to do is sleep. Sleep, eat and read.

I finished The Secret Life of Bees last night. It’s been a long time since I’ve really gotten sucked into a good story and this book did that for me. I got a very strong sense of the characters, including the distinctive voice of its young narrator, Lily, and the specific setting of South Carolina during the civil rights era. The female empowerment and friendship themes were good, although perhaps somewhat idealistic. I’ve had discussions with some friends about the ways that females, particularly adolescents, can be really mean to each other. See Margaret Atwood’s chilling Cat’s Eye for the other side of the story. But this was a different story, and intentionally uplifting. Here’s a passage:

  “All this time I just figured you liked pink,” I said.

    She laughed again. “You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart—now that matters. The whole problem with people is—”

    “They don’t know what matters and what doesn’t,” I said, filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.

    “I was going to say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.”

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A week ago we had a couple of lovely warm days. I dragged my patio chairs up from the garage, dusted them off and put them out on the deck. Then I made myself a cup of tea and brought my book outside to read. I’m looking forward for a return of that kind of weather. And I imagine the return of our local bees will soon follow.

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