Have you seen the bees dance?
The sky is overcast today. A cherry tree grows outside of my window. Not long ago, the tree was bursting with double-flowered pink blossoms, and now, few flowers cling to the tree’s branches. Flecks of pink are scattered in the green grass.
Two beehives sit beneath the tree. They are painted in pastel shades of lavender and green, the colour of brewed tea. The honeybees are tended to by my mom’s friend, a member of a local beekeeping club. Her hive swarmed—as they do at this time of year—and she needed to re-home them elsewhere. Beneath this tree turned out to be a good fit.
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When the beekeeper first arrived to set up the hives, I was sick with the virus. My dad tested positive before I did, so it didn’t come as a surprise when I started to get sick, too. I tested positive three days later, following two negative rapid tests and a few days of symptoms (sore throat, headache, fever, congestion, and cough).
I postponed meetings and asked for extensions on deadlines. I video called my dad, who was attempting to self-isolate in a shared space with my mom. I ordered groceries for delivery, while friends and family members dropped off meals and medication. I swallowed an entire package’s worth of blue and orange-coloured liquid gels as my symptoms worsened and became more unbearable. I spent most of my time sleeping throughout the day. I missed my new softball team’s first practices and games. I drank a lot of ginger and red date tea. I started getting swept into Bridgerton’s historically inaccurate storyline and love affairs. I finished seasons one and two. I’ve since watched Heartstopper, too.
A few weeks later, on a day when my energy started to come back to me, the sun broke through the clouds. Its warmth kissed my skin as I stepped across the grass. Standing under the tree, I delighted in watching the honeybees zip out of the hive and disappear into the sky to attend to their day’s work.
Bzz Bzzz Bzz
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I drew these diary comics below in 2020, at a time when the world was a lot quieter.
People were staying home. Many venues and restaurants had shut their doors. Traffic had slowed. There were so many unknowns then. The future felt uncertain and I wasn’t writing very much. I didn’t know many people who had been sick with COVID-19 in early 2020, unlike now.
Most of us didn’t know about long COVID at the time or the after effects during recovery, either.
Diary comic from May 2, 2020:
Diary comic from May 22, 2020:
Collectively, we now understand so much more about COVID-19 and the health disparities within our societal structures, although there is still lots to (un)learn, practice, and put into action around mutual aid, community care and accessibility. Despite the ongoing spread of the virus, the world has sped back up again.
Sometimes, I miss the brief quiet—the slowness. I didn’t realize how much I needed it.
On chronic illness, writer Lucia Lorenzi tweets:
some days the fatigue is so bad that it hurts, and what hurts is energy straining against the edges of thought and consciousness itself. in other news i have no fucking idea how to pace myself because years of ableism taught me to never pace myself and just push through.
My healing process over the past month has not been linear. Although I’m no longer visibly “sick” or contagious with the virus, I’ve started experiencing chronic pain in my chest (lungs? heart?), which has affected my ability to sleep, work, and do other ‘normal’ stuff. I often feel physically weak and am sometimes limited in what I can and cannot do compared to before I was sick.
I don’t know if my body just needs extra time to recover, or if it is something else entirely. I hope to have more answers soon, but still feel a bit worried. I am grateful to be double vaccinated and boostered, as this is not the case for people worldwide. I am grateful to have access to medical testing, considering the fragile state of our current medical system.
I ended up quitting the softball team. I need to try to move more slowly, on my own terms, as much as I am able to. I need to try to do a better job of not just balancing, but prioritizing, rest.
However, as I start to sift through my backlog of work, I feel worried about keeping up. As time continues to pass, I feel more and more behind. Although I’ve learned so much from friends with disabled/chronically ill friends and disability justice advocates in recent years, I admit I too have been conditioned by the capitalist nature of ableism to never pace myself and just push through.
I admit, this is no way to heal.
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Outside the beehive, there is a flurry of commotion: I watch the worker bees fly back, and forth, and back again. They work incredibly hard to keep their queen and her colony alive and well, and I am in awe by simply watching, let alone understanding the ecological significance of their daily work. Fruits literally appear in the wake of their diligence.
As I sit here writing about healing and care, I am trying to take pause. I am trying to remember that while yes, the bees are working, they work together collaboratively, distributing tasks among themselves. Their work invokes community care for one another and the well-being of the greater colony.
And amidst this everyday work, the honeybees are tending to flowers.