Bee Funerals and Other Happenings

Lady Bug was showing off some of her Thumbs Up prizes tonight. Two bottles of bubbles! But these, she told me, were nothing compared to the coveted purple prize: fifteen extra minutes of recess.

She told me about these things in one or two sentence bursts, interrupted by trips in and out of her room. She was in the room and almost out of sight when I asked, “What do you guys do at recess?”

Peeking out of the doorway she looks at me as though I must have hit my head. “Mom! We play.”

Of course they play. I am glad to hear that recess is not a series of marching exercises around the school yard.

I try to remember what I played at recess in third grade. Hopeless at any team sport, organized or otherwise, I was still happily in the land of make believe and jumping ropes. It was one of the years that jelly bracelets were popular and it was both funny and frustrating when someone’s entire collection slipped off their wrist and down the rope, stopping the game while the treasures were gathered back onto the proper arms.

One dear friend Alicia and I made a world out of a patch of dirt with broken glass all over it. It couldn’t have been more than eighteen inches long and maybe six inches across. It was magical. Crystal Lake. She would bring action figures to school and we would have such adventures. I remember being especially envious of her Princess Leia toy.

“Yes,” I continue to Lady Bug, “but what do you play? Baseball?”

She scrunches her nose at me. Team sports are not terrifying to her, but they are not her first choice either. “No. We play on the structure.”

It sounds like a post-apocalyptic ruin of long forgotten significance.

She suprises me with the next part. Popping her head out of the room again she announces, “Today we had a funeral for a bee.”

Now this does sound interesting. “For a bee?! What happened?”

“Well,” she begins, my storyteller in her true element, “Dante stepped on a bee and so we buried it, but then Neil didn’t get to see it so we dug it back up and it was ALIVE! It was moving and everything and I touched it. It was kind of gross.”

“What kind of bee was it?” Always mama, always the scientist.

“One of the big fat ones, but not a bumblebee. They do have stingers, but Neil says they rarely use them so I touched it. And then Andre stepped on it again and we buried it again.”

“Did you sing any bee funeral songs?”

“No. We all held hands in a circle and then fell backwards and then we talked about how we felt.”

I think recess is in good hands with these kids.