Jon was still in the shower and I knew I had enough time for a cup of tea on the back porch before going to breakfast at our new favorite diner, Jeans.
I sat on the warm slate steps, bathing in the morning sun. Next to me was the big pot of Spiderwort that Jon brought home from the nursery the day before.
The small pinkish, purple flowers at eye level, I turned my head to the humming of bees. They were tiny, the ones that would sting me behind the knees when I used to paint houses and was up on a ladder.
Now they were gathering pollen from the dots of yellow at the ends of the flowers stamens.
One bee would leave and another would come. It made me wonder how much pollen those small flowers could produce.
I saw three different kinds of bees, then a humming bird buzzed past me to the hanging petunia planter. A small orange butterfly drank from the dew on an Iris leaf and a wasp landed at the edge of the water in the birdbath. Could she see the other side, I wondered, or did the birdbath look to her the way standing on the edge of Lake Ontario, looked to me. (It was the first and only time I saw a lake with waves and a horizon line like the ocean)
I wondered if I could get a video of the bees, using my macro lens (that’s how small some of them were) and was just about to get up to get my iPhone, when I stopped myself.
Saturday is my sabbath. No pictures, no going online. I made up the rules myself, and I sometimes break them, but not yesterday.
I knew that if I took a video of the bees, then the experience would be over. As if I would have somehow used it up, made my point, done something about it. What happens, I wondered, if I let Saturday be the day to observe, the day to just think and allow whatever happened to me, settle into my soul without releasing it with pictures or words.
I wasn’t ready to be done watching the bees, because I knew, even if I went back to them after taking a video, it wouldn’t be the same.
And I wanted that moment to last, just a little longer.
I grew up two miles from Lake Ontario. A lake as big as an ocean with waves is my normal. It had a presence in my life. In 2004 I moved back about three miles from the lake. When I moved to AZ in 2011 I experienced shock! How I missed Lake Ontario, the Genesee River and the creeks and streams nearby. Water is a precious gift.
And you really do understand the preciousness of water in a place lie Arizona. It’s easier to take it for granted here in the Northeast.