CHRISTOPHER'S BUZZY BEE
“…we lived in Pasadena and loved going to the Rose Bowl flea market every Sunday….”
This is my son Christopher’s bee. When Christopher was little, we lived in Pasadena and loved going to the Rose Bowl flea market every Sunday to look for things to stock a little antique business I ran. That was our stated mission, but really we just loved the carnival atmosphere—the smell of hot dogs and churros in the soft morning air, the clamor and bustle of vendors setting up for the day.
Christopher, who was deaf, would troll the lower shelves for treasures, tugging me down to see. “Beautiful” he would sign enthusiastically, circling his outspread hand in front of his face with a flourish, then closing his fingers like a lady’s fan. He’d thump his chest. “I like.”
One day, he grabbed my hand and whooped. “Bee!” he signed, pinching his thumb and index finger together to sting his cheek, then pretending to swat the stinger away. We pulled the little Fisher Price Buzzy Bee from its hive of junk and he took it for a spin. Its little yellow wings spun furiously, just as they had on mine as a child. Other customers drew toward us, laughing with their own pull-toy memories. And soon they were signing “bee, bee” back to Christopher.
We took that bee on many adventures down our bumpy sidewalk in the Bungalow Heaven part of old Pasadena. It never failed to make us new friends. When people stopped to chat with us, Christopher would make his name sign, a cupped “C” hand circled over his heart, followed by the sign for his age, which was his habitual way of introducing himself. Then he’d wait expectantly for them to sign their names and ages. Once I’d interpreted, most seemed delighted to comply. “Chris-7,” he signed to someone on one of our last walks together. Seven was the age he died.
A few weeks before his death, we’d spent a morning rolling candles out of sheets of beeswax and dousing them in glitter, a craft I’d loved to do as a child with my own mother. We were making them for her Christmas present. I can still see his face shining from joy and glitter both.
He died unexpectedly of an abdominal blockage that New Year’s Eve morning. The beeswax candles have long since burned away. The bee, I will keep always.
—Carol Smith
Carol Smith is author of the memoir Crossing the River: Seven Stories That Saved My Life (Abrams Press) and an editor with NPR affiliate KUOW Public Radio in Seattle.