I was disappointed over the holiday that my houseguests were not very interested in seeing my beehive that's sitting in the garage at the moment--all pristine and white, with it's sweet metal roof, the neatly stacked boxes, the frames with their beeswax sheets--waiting for the bees. (Although I guess it is kind of an unusual hobby to aspire to, with a potentially limited audience.)

I did learn from them, however, that my grandpa, whose been gone since I was a little girl, and who worked on the railroad all of his life in rural Oklahoma, had actively hunted for bee trees every spring. He didn't have any beekeeping gear to speak of. He made do with what he had--some wire mesh that he fashioned into a beekeepers hat of sorts and an old lard can filled with rags as a smoker.

They say he never got stung. Once.

Although I'm not quite sure I believe that.

For several days, I've been walking around accompanied by this image of the grizzled old Scotsman. It's a picture of him raiding the hollow trees, hands filled with honeycomb, bees buzzing, carrying home a bucket of the sticky sweet stuff to his family. Frankly, for many reasons I won't go into here, the man was a stranger to me.

And suddenly he is my grandpa the bee charmer.

All this time I'd been told pretty much how he was a sweet old man but one who'd been bad with money, didn't have much of a reputation in the teeny tiny, red dirt town, gave my irreputable uncle all of the money he did have, while others went without. I've seen the shack they lived in. I have a nicer hen house now. One time there'd only been onions to eat. The teller of these tales had in highschool only one pair of underwear, and that wasn't his favorite sweater he wore every single day, but the only one he had.

My Grandpa The Bee Charmer did have a team of horses once, when his cousins talked him into leasing a farm as a sort of family business where they never did any of the promised work, but raided all of the pecans from all of the trees like a bunch of scheming trash birds, leaving him even more broke than before.

I still remember my grandpa's funeral, where my uncle, who was drunk as a skunk as usual, threw himself across the new grave and bawled like a baby, fat Jack Daniel's tears rolling down his hot cheeks. I remember as a kindergartener sure not knowing exactly what to think about that. My uncle's gone now too. And I don't miss him one bit, although I do feel sad for someone who lived such a life.

I'm not glossing it over. Not rubbing on the glowing beeswax. Not waxing poetic. It's just that I'm wintering over in a hive dripping with stores, a place that no amount of disinterest and no stories about who did or didn't do what can raid. That honeycomb is filled.

While the holiday houseguests have left, and my house is back to normal, they've given me quite the unexpected gift--

My Grandpa the Bee Charmer.

I will sit and hold that one for a while. I might even invite him to sit with me underneath the pinon tree this spring, where we'll watch the bees together.