Beekeeping gave me a place to rest my worried mind. It was hard not to think about that every waking moment. I also developed an over-attachment to my stuffed animal, a pink cat named Morris, that I slept with all the way through college.Ī: I lost my father physically, and my mother emotionally. I squeezed under beds, into bushes in the yard, I even got in the clothes hamper – don’t ask me why. I’d climb a tree full of buzzing bees, I’d read (with a candle!) in a closed closet. Divorce made me fear that bad things can suddenly happen at any moment, so I figured if I was hidden away then bad luck couldn’t find me, so I hid places for hours at a stretch. The adults did not explain things to Matthew and me, so we were left wondering. What compounded my confusion was the silence in our family. She became like an older sister to us instead of a mother.
Mom was severely depressed, and stayed in bed for several years, and when she finally re-emerged, she had relinquished parenthood to our grandparents. My brother and I and our mother shared one room, with Matthew in a cot and me in a double bed with Mom, and we stayed in the arrangement for the next nine or ten years. She said we were just visiting our grandparents, but it was confusing because we never returned to Dad. I was five when one day my mother took my younger brother and me on a plane from Rhode Island to California. They were my guardians during a rough patch in my life.Ī: My parents fought all the time. How they taught me how to be a better person. My co-workers thought I was having a meltdown, but I knew then that it would take me a whole book to explain to people how much these tiny creatures mean to me. When I held bees again, after 30 years, I felt the vibration of their wings zing through my body, and it was so familiar, so personal, that I wept.
When my grandfather became too frail to continue beekeeping, I felt an irrepressible urge to beekeep again, so I convinced my bosses at the SF Chronicle to let me put beehives on the company roof.
A: It wasn’t until I got older and reflected back that I realized I had a quite unusual childhood, being raised by an eccentric beekeeper grandfather, with my mother hidden away behind a closed door.
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