Beneath Surfaces

August 16, 2023

Summer is somehow almost over and I have a story to tell you from the spring.

In early May our daughter, home from college, was digging out our old raised herb box, which in a former life was her old sandbox, in order to flatten out the space and turn it into a new area for perennials. I was working elsewhere in the yard when I heard her shriek and I went over to see what she was gaping at–she had hit an underground bumblebee nest. The nest appeared to be undamaged by the shoveling, and the fat, fuzzy bumblebees working away under the dirt were busy and bright and not covered in dirt as you might imagine fuzzy bees who lived underground would be. We gaped together at this riveting scene for awhile and decided to leave everything be for the moment. Knowing nothing about this sort of thing we figured the bees would, I don’t know, clear out and leave over the weekend. Or something.

They didn’t. So we altered the garden plans a little, covered the bee’s nest lightly with soil, left the hump of raised dirt, threw on a few perennials, scattered a few wood chips, and called it a day, hoping the best for our fuzzy neighbors. I did know to leave their nest uncovered by mulch, ground cover, or anything else because underground bees need bare dirt to go in and out of. I had heard that on the radio not even one week before, and thought at the time how odd it was that bees lived underground.

The final touch to our little bee area was a sign, made by our young neighbor Flora who painted it on wood and nailed it onto a short post. Now anyone who came in our yard would know that bees lived in that spot and they should behave accordingly. Welcome to Beeville.

Bumblebees, unlike honeybees, are native to North America and also, unlike honeybees, are wild. The queen, designated the previous summer and fattened up on pollen by the hive, has hibernated alone over the winter, after the entire rest of the colony has died off. She wakes up in early spring, emerges from underground, and starts to gather pollen and create nectar (which she stores in ingenious little handmade wax chalices) for her future worker bee daughters. The underground nest grows, one hollow wax sphere at a time, into a mass of spheres, a gnarled misshapen ugly ball, nothing at all like the symmetrical order of a honeybee hive. An underground bumblebee nest will never grow beyond a few hundred bees and can have as few as 40. After the first batches of exclusively female bees, the queen produces a few rounds of both males and females; the males all fly off to go find a queen somewhere while the females keep working on collecting pollen and caring for the latest round of babies. Some will be designated to be raised as queens, and these will also leave the nest. The goal of the nest is to create queens, fed extra as larvae and working hard all summer to become large and strong enough to survive the winter. These fly off to go start a new colony somewhere else. Each queen will hibernate underground by herself, somehow surviving a Chicago winter, and perhaps robust gardening efforts. And the whole thing starts all over again.

We’re coming up on the end of the summer cycle of the underground bumblebees. Who knew there was so gosh awful much happening right under the surface of the dirt that we were not at all privy to?

Do you ever think about that? Concrete realities that are just out of view–that you had no idea about?

There are so many. In May we lost a family member to suicide–who had been struggling for a long time. I knew nothing of that struggle.

It’s so hard to see beneath the surface. We usually don’t look. We don’t ask, inquire, regard, find out, discern. We see, as Harper Lee’s Judge Taylor says, what we look for, and hear what we listen for. What’s happening below the surface of others’ lives requires an awful lot of us. In order to look closer, harder, we’d need to shift our regard from ourselves. We’d need to take time. And who has the time?

Our culture is obsessed with surfaces, wants them shiny and polished, dewy-skinned or well-tailored or handmade and well sanded. We demand our children and chicken coops and dinners and tabletops be Insta-polished; our kids require themselves to be Snap-ready at all times with high quality content ready for sharing. And most of us have no idea what is going on underneath any surface. We’re trained to keep our gaze and our attention fixed on surfaces.

But even if you’re selfless as a saint, ever aware of the subterranean happenings of others, their sufferings, ever attuned to their needs–even if you are all that–there are just too many folks. Too many stories. Not only are we scarcely aware of anything below the surface, it’s impossible to be cognizant of very much at all even if we’re trying.

So what to do in a world of unseen stories? What to make of this context we live in, full as it is of unknown hurts or woes, dreams unuttered, sufferings unspoken? If we can’t know the depths then let us at least behave as if what might be there beneath the surface of this jaggedy world might be difficult. Or lonely. Or vexing.

It’s not that hard.

All we have to do is tread gently.

There are unknown worlds beneath our feet and all around us every day. Tread gently.

_______________________________

In June my husband and I heard an amazing roots/blues band, Bywater Call, in St. Louis. I think my favorite song was “Sign of Peace.” It’s a little bit about how to comport oneself in a jaggedy world. Here’s a video of this song, followed by the lyrics (my own transcription).

Bywater Call, “Sign of Peace” 

If you see me, baby, way down low, give me a sign of peace (2X)
Reach your hand out, help me up
Till I got nothing but the sky to touch
If you see me baby way down low, give me a sign of peace

If you see me baby, scared and poor, give me a sign of peace (2X)
Set a place at your table, I will repay you when I’m able
If you see me baby, scared and poor, give me a sign of peace

If you see me walking in the rain, give me a sign of peace (2X)
Give me shelter from the water
Treat me like I was your son or daughter
If you see me in the rain, give me a sign of peace

Give me a sign of peace
Give me a sign of peace
Give me a sign that you’ll love me
Even when I’ve lost my way
A little help from up above me

If you need me baby, reach your hand out, give me a sign of peace (2X)
All the things you’ve helped me through–
Let me repay my debt to you
If you need me baby, reach your hand out, give me a sign of peace

Give me a sign of peace, of peace, of peace
Give me a sign of love
Of love, of love, of love, of love
Help me out, help me out, help me out
If you see me baby, way down low, give me a sign of peace. 

If you want to learn more about bumblebees, and create your own underground nest for them, go here.

If you or someone you know is struggling beyond what seems bearable, here are some resources: 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (24 hours a day); IDPH Suicide prevention resource page; American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, which is holding walks in many cities this fall to raise funds, awareness, and mutual support for those affected by suicide. I’ll be joining the Chicago walk.