There were two absolutely adorable little blond boys, ages 4 and 6, a little shy as they looked up at the stranger in the strange house, a get-well note in their hands and with their smiling grandmother, who had driven them, standing behind.
A moment of confusion on my part and then I got it.
A little before my surgery, the local paper had run a story on their family: the dad with the Silicon Valley job and the small in-town yard but a little bit of the Woodstock “got to get back to the land, and set my soul free” in him, and so, he had set up a small beekeeping operation with his little boys.
Who get to deliver the goods. But they’ll only go as far as a four-year-old’s attention span. We’re on the far end of town (and there’s only so much honey for their subscribers); we just barely squeaked in.
Delivery times are, as I understand it, whenever there is honey to share; I told the dad in an email when I signed up that I was going to be heading into surgery and if nobody was home, would it be okay to just drop it off at the door? He said he would send a honeybee to buzz my window hello at Stanford for me. I was charmed.
But I got to see the boys instead. It took me a moment to register that oh, right, as I opened the door, not seeing their jar of honey quite at first. Lost in the cuteness.
And I have to tell you, that is the best-tasting honey I have had in years. Note that the jar isn’t quite full–it was earlier… (Yes, Mom. You used to catch me dipping a spoon in the honey back in the days when I, too, was little. Haven’t changed a bit.)