Armed Liberal

So my ex- lives about a block and a half from our new place (my SO is still working on that one), and wandered by with the Littlest Guy. They were headed to the park across the street, and I had his mitt and ball.

After they took off, I heard a siren, peeked out the window, and saw the paramedic truck pulling up. I’m out the door at this point, but see that they’re pulling up to and then working on a couple sitting on the ground next to a car, so assume it was an accident of some kind. The grownups (EMT) are there, I can’t be of any assistance, it’s not my son or ex-, so I head back to the office. At that point the doorbell rings, and they’ve come back...it appears that two people at the park were attacked by a bee swarm.

So his mom leaves, and LG hangs out with me for a bit, and then I decide to go talk to the apiarists who have shown up and see if we have Africanized bees living nearby. (we don’t)

LG walks with me and we go talk to the lady apiarist, who is cleaning out the remains of a hive from an empty wheelbarrow (there is a community garden across the street as well), and then she gives him a fist-sized chunk of comb, dripping with honey.

She explains that this part of the hive was where baby bees would have grown up, and we can see some larval bees in a couple of the cells. He and I have talked about bees and what they do…there are flowers in front of the house, and where we hike in Palos Verdes, there are chest-high flowers that always seem to have bees on them.

He starts licking the dripping honey off his hand, looks up and offers me some…and I take it and it is just amazingly good. A Platonic ideal of what the honey in the stores ought to taste like. A burst of sweetness then an incredible flavor that I find nowhere else.

Then I walked him back to his mom’s house.

Somehow, walking down the street with your kid, licking honey from a comb off your fingers, and watching him happily lick the comb, makes the day perfect. All you folks who don’t live in big cities may scoff and do this every day. But for me it just put a sweet glow on the day that I hope will last for a while.