The
elusive wannabees. No, not the Brazilian
African Honey Bee invading America via grapefruit transported innocently across
the Mexican American border at the Matamoras/Brownsville crossing by a sixtyish
matron dressed in a pressed jean skirt carrying a paper bag on her way to the
bus stop where a city bus will pick her up and deposit her at a sprawling ranch home.
The bee will fly out when she puts the bag on the kitchen table and
grabs the fruit to rinse it off before slicing the coral orb. Around the corner and down the hall to the
last bedroom, the home’s occupants will wake to the piercing smell of fresh cut
grapefruit which will be set out in cereal bowls on breakfast linens
accompanied by serrated grapefruit spoons and fresh hot coffee set on a
well-polished mahogany dining table in a beige dining room diffused with the
early rays of a Texas morning falling through paned windows onto the flat beige
carpet that runs throughout the 3500 square foot home.
Eating
a section of grapefruit, the man chews the semi-sweet fruit while reading the
headlines of the morning paper, which jump out in big black letters Elusive Wanna Bees Invade America. A type-o, he says, out loud to the
other person at the table who is engrossed in watching Good Morning America on
the TV which has sat on the sideboard in the dining room ever since a silver
and white anniversary present was unwrapped three years.
Yes,
she says, dabbing her nose with a breakfast napkin where the juice of a wild spurt
leapt from the mother fruit and the biting edges of the serrated grapefruit
spoon. She places the linen napkin back
in her lap, relieved to know Joan Lunden won’t catch her with grapefruit juice
splashed across her washed but unmade face.
While the couple finish their grapefruit and toast, the morning program
dives into the topic of “Wanna Bees”
with an expert who has recently published the book Wanna Bees or Will Bees :
A Self Help Guide which will be in bookstores next week.
Oh,
I get it, she says, not even noticing a bee perched on her grapefruit shell,
instead brushing toast crumbs into her napkin with the unconscious precision
developed over years of cleaning up after men and children and dry, unbuttered
toast, a light sweeping action by a hand beginning to tighten up, with nails
tipped in a classic shade of pink beige which is slightly chipped after the
previous day’s gardening, putting out new tomato plants for her famous chicken
salad stuffed tomatoes served on lettuce leaves for a luncheon with intimate
friends who will linger after the last Club cracker is gone, sitting back in
the mahogany dining room chairs talking about new grandchildren over the
tinkling of ice cubes melting in sparkling crystal as sugar and lemon are
splashed together with a long, slender ice tea spoon indigenous to a proper
silver place setting which is included in the dowry of every proper Southern
bride or wrapped in a soft blue felt bag tied with string waiting in a dark
drawer in a side board owned by a much-loved grandmother who no longer drinks
ice tea.
A
much-loved grandmother who never worries about wanna bees invading her
home. She just is where she is, every
day and that is enough. She doesn’t know
her granddaughter lies in bed at night dreaming of what she wants to be, glancing
at the clock as the hour changes, less time left to sleep before the baby
wakes. Not ready to get up and not ready
to quit thinking, the new mother never realizes or stops to remember that a
year ago she lay in the same brass bed feeling the movement of the baby close
to her heart, wanting to be a mother, ready to be a mother. A year later, an evening’s entertainment is spent
sorting through old magazines tearing out pretty pictures of perfectly decorated
rooms that she wants to have someday.
Another torn out stack of recipes she wants to prepare and taste
someday. The baby sleeps but rolls over,
a little foot moves against her lullaby lambie-pie turning a wind up key into a
brief sleepy note or two, assuring that the baby is still breathing and moving
quietly under her blanket. In the next
room, the granddaughter/ new mother lying awake in the dark, rearranging
furniture and picking paint color for the inspiration needed to clean out the
extra bedroom now piled with everything which was in the nursery – the exercise
bike, the card table, the broken club chair, two milk crates full of albums
which don’t sound good anymore because of the strange crackle in the right
speaker sitting on the dresser missing a leg but propped up with a textbook
from the bookcase full of used textbooks which is next to the old broken down sleeper
sofa used for company.
Three
hours distance down a two lane highway running into a town overpassing the
train tracks, taking the third left road which travels on the west side of the
big white two-story house the much-loved grandmother “who just is every day and
that is enough” is lying in her bed listening to the clocks in four different
rooms chiming at four varied times the same early morning hour. The
tick tock chants “go to sleep” but she ignores the clock which came from her
girlhood home. Bats. Wasps.
But the wanna bees have never invaded her home. She is elegant and simple, simply elegant
with a quiet style which doesn’t need flash to be noticed. She hasn’t needed wanna bees.
The
granddaughter hangs pictures in her sleep on newly painted walls - by
spring. And something clicks while she’s
lying there next to a snoring husband. Your
wanna bees should be where you are right now.
The self-acceptance of “just being where you are every day and that
is enough,” like the much-loved
grandmother who has been chanted to sleep by the tick tock of her clock sitting
across the room on a maple dresser by the door.
A good role model for solid guidance,
instead of reading in the newspaper or hearing on the TV while you wipe
grapefruit from your chin that wanna bees have invaded America.
