There Were Honey Bees - Before Children Became Kids -

"When I was little there wasn't a single kid in the world, seriously, nary a one, save for goat offspring"!

We often find that simply being in the moment, is enough to recharge our spiritual batteries. It makes me mindful of what I value in life, the world my mom gave me. When we were little, it was a time, when our moms were our first teachers, in our first school, the homeschool.

She never followed any proper homeschool curriculum, she just subtly introduced me to new objects, tastes, and feelings, and soon I experienced what I can perhaps call a kind of mental home improvement, albeit my own perception of what this special place called home was.

My closest and dearest friend, granny Ena, broadened my horizon immeasurably. In my baby years, she didn't live with us, but she was always there somehow when I later slept over at her house, a converted, tram similar to the ones plying the hilly roads of San Francisco, Her house made me feel safe from all harm, whenever I was allowed to spend a weekend at her home, it was like a homecoming for me.

As I grew older my "homeland' grew larger with the inclusion of the village school, the world outside of my homeland, the world of my huge collie dog Major, the few chickens, my cousin Pixie, my adoptive granddad David, my dad was the only one who called him uncle David, everyone else called him daddy, He smelled of Old Spice and pipe tobacco he always had a tasty chunk of beef biltong, (a kind of jerky) for me.

He would slice into thin strips, ritualistically almost, using his trusted black-handled Joseph Rodgers pocket knife, offering me a slice, then carving himself a strip, and repeating the routine until it was all gone. The knife had many uses, one of them was his use of it as a scraping tool, to clean out the compacted ash from his smoking pipe bowl.
Suddenly, with the advent of school the home decor changed, there were many more objects added, there was my favorite teacher, Mrs. Strangman, she introduced me to the story of my favorite creatures in the whole world, the incredible honey bee.

To this day, her story about the unassuming honey bee, and how she worked every day, from dawn to dusk, carrying the precious drops of nectar back to the hive, having collected, it drop, by drop and from dozens of flowers, she would do so, tirelessly, hour by hour, to the wildflower patch and back to the hive she flew, until one evening just before dusk, her little heart just stopped beating, in mid-flight, somewhere over a meadow or a pond, into which her tiny exhausted body dropped slowly downward on the wings of a spring evening breeze after a hot day, and in her death, her, spent little body providing a meal for a hungry carp.
I can still hear Mrs. Strangman's lilting voice, relating to me, that bitter-sweet story, like it was just yesterday. Once a month she brought me a jar of the tastiest honey in the whole world, wholesome and unadulterated. Her husband uncle Paul Strangman was a bee-keeper.

In those days before children became kids, we called all senior males uncle and the senior ladies, we called aunt. Later on our family moved to another suburb and I had to say goodbye to the chickens and granddad David's farm, my dad, I called him chum, after my mom's pet name for him.
Those were the days when the only Homer, was a mythological Greek poet, nothing is known of Homer's life, but as author of two of ancient Greece's most important literary works - the Iliad and the Odyssey, his importance to Greek culture and also the world, can hardly be underestimated, obviously, not the fictional, patriarchal character Homer Jay Simpson, in the animated TV series, The Simpson's and his eponymous family.

Our home in harmony, was soon to change into a home in Harrison mountain, where according the writer Jim Harrison, writes in his book "In Search of Small Gods." “Death steals everything except our stories.” Although death has stolen the endearing characters in my home, only those endure the erosive elements of time.

The epic arrival of my baby brother Eugene, had elevated my concept of home exponentially, for suddenly, there was someone besides Me, Myself and I, Here was a brand new and completely unique creature.

Who knew what amazing adventures lay in store, no Huck Finn story would ever be complete without his best friend and protagonist Tom Sawyer, in tow or a "Just William", the eternally frowning and scruffy looking eleven year old boy character William Brown and his best friend Ginger, and the other two gang members, Henry and Douglas, together, calling themselves the Outlaws.

My final homeland episodes, included the two additions to my own gang of Outlaws, the first one to arrive was my youngest brother Deon our gang's financial consultant and then, a baby sister named Rene', she was destined to eventually become Dame Rene in a mythological realm of her own world called the lost kingdom of Goneawayland.