Beehives.

Last summer, my five year-old daughter, Helena, and I went for a walk with our dogs down to the Beach Park in Des Moines, WA, our hometown. It was a little misty and cool, a pretty standard late August morning. While walking through the park, we ran into my ten year-old son, Aden and his buddy, Elijah, riding their bikes. For the previous three days, the boys had been scouring the town with the fairly newfound freedom of being able to ride around un-chaperoned. I remember this time in my life very fondly.
Upon seeing me in the park, my son’s eyes lit up a little bit in excitement to see me. He was playing it pretty cool, but he was genuinely happy to see me or maybe more happy for me to see him being independent. “What are you clowns up to?” I asked, casually. “Not much. We were just throwing rocks at a beehive. Want to see?” Aden replied. A tiny, but powerful electric impulse hit me. “Do I want to see!!?!! Of course, I want to see!!” I thought, frantically. Beehives still excite me and it will be a sad day when I pass up an opportunity to check one out. As we headed to the back of the park, I felt the rare and beautiful anticipation of something cool about to happen. When we got to the beehive, I saw that it was a dandy! It was a big hive and the bees were thick and swarming pretty good. It hung about ten-feet high in a wide-open hole between the branches of a maple tree.
I gently questioned Aden if he remembered how it felt when he stepped, barefooted, on a honeybee in our yard a couple of weeks earlier. His scream had been heard for blocks. He responded with, “Oh, yeah!” Enough said. It was a subtle, yet effective warning, a father’s duty. Upon clearing my parental conscience, I picked up a good-sized rock and hucked it. I hit the hive hard and square, then scooped up my daughter and ran with a wild-eyed smile on my face. Just behind me, laughing the hysterical laugh of fear and fun, the boys peddled furiously. We were all laughing that laugh. We managed to outrun the bees and were unharmed. I suppose this story would not be told had we been stung, as I’m sure my wife would have made re-living this moment un-fun, probably forever. Nonetheless, we lived to tell the tale and though there are many things that I am eagerly waiting to outgrow, chucking rocks at beehives is not one of them. I have become convinced that a small fragment of youth resides, untarnished by work deadlines and house payments, in each hurled stone, waiting to make a man a boy again.
On a cool August morning in my son’s tenth year, I was able to surprise him by truly sharing his excitement and letting one fly!! From the moment the rock left my fingers, I had, in some small, though not insignificant way, changed, to him. I wasn’t just Dad, the rule-maker and fun-taker. He saw that I was capable of something else, something more. I had the potential to be more to him. He’s not sure what yet, but I got him thinking and that’s a start. It was a good day.