There are great moments in marital life. Like when you see the joy a flat screen t.v. will bring your husband and decide to forego your usual schtick about expense and practicality. Then there are other moments, like when you bicker over stupid stuff. Worse, in front of your children.
At the beginning of the summer, my daughter beckoned me to the yard to see this:
“Ooh, it’s a bumble bee’s nest,” I said, stepping back. The previous summer I’d unexpectedly uncovered a bumble bee nest in our yard while gardening. This qualified me as an expert. My husband ambled over. “No way,” he said. “It’s a fungus.” “My daughter looked back and forth between us, as if watching a tennis match. “Nest.” “Fungus.” “Nest.” “Fungus.”
Enter (into my mind) David Sedaris, who I’m fairly sure would never even briefly imagine himself a relationship counselor. As the nest/fungus debate stretched into hours, escalating to Google Image searches and the like, I remembered Sedaris’ essay about the chef with the rubber hand. (In France, where Sedaris lived at the time, “chef” means “boss.”) In the essay, Sedaris comes home one night and reports to his partner Hugh and their dinner guests that his boss has a prosthetic rubber hand. Hugh finds this notion ridiculous and insists that the prosthesis must be made of something else. The two go on to argue about the rubber hand endlessly. At the essay’s conclusion, Sedaris says something to the effect of (and I’m paraphrasing): “Even in death there would be no relief. My headstone would read “It was rubber.” And Hugh’s adjacent tombstone would fire back “No it wasn’t.”
Joe was right, it was a fungus. Even before we figured this out, I dropped the debate. He started poking at the mysterious cluster with a stick. As I watched from the window, I took comfort in the fact that the bees would deliver their own special brand of justice, should there be a need. My kids ran out to join their father in the mulch after he gave them the all-clear sign. The three of them wildly kicked the once-neat cluster of buds to flying white smithereens. As each spongy chunk landed on the ground, it bounced a little. Like…rubber.
Like looking up into the sky, seeking shapes in clouds, or the ancient soothsayer reading the future in the bowels of a dead animal – we bring our own experience and dreams to what we THINK we see. Fungus or bumble bee’s nest ? Sometimes the scientific truth isn’t as important as the illusions we bring to the occasion.
~ Dreyfus once wrote from Devil’s Island that he would see the most glorious birds. Many years later in Brittany he realized they had only been sea gulls… For me they will always be — glorious birds.~
“As I watched from the window, I took comfort in the fact that the bees would deliver their own special brand of justice, should there be a need. ”
Just. Plain. Funny.