Telling the Bees by Peggy Hesketh Page A

footsteps by abandoning her childhood home to follow her husband’s penchant. Convinced by my father of the advantages of a warm, dry climate over their native Oregon’s cold, wet coast in terms of optimum honey production, my mother had wholeheartedly endorsed his decision to migrate southward in the second year of their long and happy marriage. In her own cheerful manner, she helped my father scour the sprawling bean fields and orchards that blanketed the coastal plain south of Los Angeles for the ideal location to establish strong hives and a good home for the family they hoped to raise together. After a considerable search, my parents chose a ten-acre parcel of land with a small orange grove to the rear of the property in the county named after those selfsame groves that to their delight were situated directly beneath a well-traveled flyway of wild bees from two different directions. The east side of the property abutted a Santa Fe Railway depot and switching yard, and the west bordered the Straussmans’ farm, which abounded with walnut and almond orchards fronted by an imposing clutch of peppertrees that shaded their single-story wood-frame bungalow.
    Although there already was a small cottage, not unlike the Straussmans’, on our property when acquired, it had suffered noticeable flood damage the previous winter. Unfortunate as the flooding from the Santa Ana River had been to the community, however, it allowed my parents to purchase the property and existing building at a discount.
    My father used the money he’d saved on the property to order a new Sears Roebuck and Co. two-story, six-room bungalow, known familiarly as “The Sherbourne.” Like all catalog homes of its ilk, the materials and plans—including all lumber, millwork, laths, shingles, pipes, gutters, sash weights, hardware, and paint—were shipped, as advertised, directly to the nearby freight depot in two boxcars. My parents lived in the original cottage, which was eventually converted into a honey shed, during the two years it took to build our new home. My father took pride in its sturdy design after the fashion of the day, with its gabled roof, wide clapboard siding, and large front porch. He found it pleasing to sit on the porch swing he built after the house was finally done and relish the evening breeze that blew in from the ocean after a hard day’s work.
    “This is built to last,” he would often say, smacking his hand on the beam that supported the porch roof.
    I am sure that when the Straussmans moved into their home only a few years before my parents built theirs, they were just as convinced of its enduring legacy.
    My mother died more than forty years ago, on by far the hottest day of what had been an uncommonly hot summer. My father followed her to the grave thirteen long years later on a cold winter’s day, leaving me alone to honor their memory in the house they built.
    When I think of my dear mother, which is often even after all these years, I think of her standing by the stove, an apron tied around her midriff, a tea towel draped over her shoulder, and a light dusting of flour covering her hands, as she watches over a batch of chicken frying in the cast-iron skillet her mother gave her as a wedding present.
    “Go set the table,” she would call out to my sister and me as the chicken browned. “Hurry up, now.”
    She rarely had to call us twice. My father was another matter. It wasn’t that he consciously ignored her, but I think he found it most difficult to relinquish those quiet moments at the end of the day when he used to sit by himself on the front porch swing gathering his thoughts.
    My father once told me, in a rare conversation we shared on that very swing, that he knew he would marry my mother the very moment she offered to help him change a super. He told me that he had first spoken to her only the day before when by chance they sat next to each other at church and after the service she invited him to join her at