Saturday, May 7, 2011

The Sleeping Bee

****This post written by the blogger's Mom,

otherwise known as Gramma*****

One sunny morning recently on our porch, Zoe noticed a bumblebee lying underneath our table.
She asked me why the bee wasn’t moving, and I told her the bee was probably “sleeping”, which has been my Son-in-Law's way of avoiding the death subject.
My daughter told me it was okay, as death was now being discussed with little Miss 3 Year Old. So, I told her the bee was dead. She got down on her knees and tried to BZZZZZZ at it and it didn’t move.
The discussion went to “Gramma, why doesn’t the bee move?” I stumbled and told her that when you died you can’t move…..after many “why” questions, including “Gramma, why won’t he open his eyes?”, I finally resorted to the, “because God made it that way” answer to a few questions, much to the dismay of my daughter.
Zoe asked if she could touch the bumble bee - we decided not to touch but to look at it. She got down nose to nose with the bumble bee and just watched it for a long time, very, very quietly. And then said, “Gramma, the bee still won’t wake up “– so Gramma said, “Zoe, do you want to sing the bee a song?” I thought we would make up a little ditty about a sleeping bumblebee on my porch, when very quietly, she began to sing to the bee…..”The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout……….” The song I sang to her every morning when she was a baby…..


-Gramma