Sunshine on a cloudy day

“Mom! Is it true that bees are important?” He asked as his mother was unpacking the groceries into the different cupboards and the fridge.

She looked over as Adam was sitting at the kitchen table, his crayons spread across the table (some were on the floor), letting his creativity flow, taking him to places only he knew and understood.

“Uhmm… yes, I suppose…” She replied, confused. She didn’t know much about bees, other than that they were pollinators and they stung, as she had been when she was seven and a bee had gotten stuck in her hair. Feeling something moving there, she had reached for it, only to feel an excruciating pain build up in her thumb, as if her heart had traveled to the tip of her finger and stayed there to make sure the index didn’t fall off.

“If it’s any consolation, pumpkin, it hurt it more than it did you. After they sting, bees die.” Her mom had told her while she wiped the tears away from her warm cheeks. It didn’t help, if anything, it had made her feel guilty, which caused more tears to sprout uncontrollably from her big, blue eyes.

“Miss Harrity told us today that bees are in danger. That they are disappearing and dying and that if we don’t have bees, we won’t have a lot of fruits and it will hurt the ‘echo-simpson’… Mom…” She looked at her five-year-old lovingly, knowing that the word he meant was not the one he said, but knew it wasn’t one he had in his vocabulary. “What is an ‘echo-simpson’?” He asked shyly. She sighed.

“Didn’t Miss H. explain that to you guys?” She questioned, hoping to not have to explain it herself, as she didn’t really know how to explain it. She was an interior designer, had no head for science, and never much of an inclination towards it. She always let her husband explain those types of things because they bored her to death.

“Yes… but I don’t remember.” He looked embarrassed and pretended as if it didn’t bother him by working hard on his drawing. She could tell he was frustrated.

“It’s alright, hon, how about we go look it up online? Mommy doesn’t know exactly how to explain it either. So let’s go learn together, shall we?” She finished putting the groceries away and moved towards her son, holding out her hand so he would reach out for it. They would sit on the couch and check on her iPad a simple enough definition for her son to understand.

“Let’s see,” she said once they were comfortably seated, his head resting in the nook of her underarm, observing with big, wide eyes the screen that would come up with the answer to his question. “Ecosystem… ecosystem…” She mumbled more to herself than to her child, who looked up from his position to his mom, trying to find the answer on her face. He looked back at the screen, although he could barely make out any of it, only the pictures he saw. “Let’s see what Google tells us…”. He saw her typing something on the digital keyboard, instead of asking Siri, and said out loud:

“According to generationgenius.com... ‘An ecosystem is a community of interacting organisms and their environment. Living things interact with each other and also with non-living things like soil, water, and air. Ecosystems often contain many living things and can be as small as your backyard or as large as the ocean.’ So, in fewer words, everything that is alive is an organism, and the way that they talk to each other, or act towards one another and their environment, which is that which surrounds them, that is the ecosystem. Does that make sense, honey?” He looked thoughtful for a minute, staring at the pictures on the website. She kissed his head and gently tousled his hair.

“I think so…” he replied after a long silence, “so, how does it hurt if there are no bees?”

“Well, since bees are pollinators, which means, they go to flowers and get the nectar, and on their way, they move around the seeds from the flowers where they got the nectar from so that those flowers grow in other places and keep blooming. They just make everything work as it should. Without bees (and butterflies), a lot of these plants with these flowers would most likely die eventually.”

Adam sat pensive, leaning his head against his mom’s side, her arm around his shoulders.

“Mom, I don’t want the bees to die… can we do something?” His voice trembled and tears were appearing in his eyes.

“Oh, hon! Don’t worry about that… Tell you what? How about we go to the market tomorrow, we get some marigolds —which looks like this pretty flower you see here,” she pointed at a bright yellow flower on the screen after typing quickly the name and displaying the images, “and plant them in the garden outside? We can get other flowers too if you like that bees and butterflies might enjoy. This will attract them so they can keep doing their job, and spreading seeds and life all around. You can go outside and check on them every day and see how they are doing. How does that sound?”

“Yes, mommy! Can we? Can we go today?” He implored. She looked at the time and realized she had nothing more important to do. So getting up, holding her kid’s hand, grabbing her purse and car keys, they headed towards the door.

“Mom… that flower… it looks like a bright sunshine on a cloudy day.” She smiled at that, caressed her son’s cheek, and nodded.

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