Apples, Wasps, and Nascent Love

You may recall that early on in this blog I stated that human nature is certainly a part of the natural world though we seldom think of it that way. Here's an example of what I meant by that comment. First the "Knowing" part.

Nature seems to have decreed that boys and girls grow up seeing the world through different filters and reacting to it in different ways. That's not surprising since biologically the genders have significant differences as well as similarities. In fact in many species the male and female live out their lives quite separately, only getting together to mate. The need to reproduce in humans typically brings couples together for mating and then an extended time of child rearing. So the little boys who don't like little girls and the little girls who stay aloof from little boys have to merge their worlds at some point so they can live together and ensure the next generation. Nature takes care of this melding very nicely in our prepubescent years. Our first moves toward the opposite gender are asexual and arise from some shared activity.

And now the "Experiencing" part.

With me it happened in the summer between fourth and fifth grade when a new family moved into one of the large old brick houses up the street. Since we shared our town with a large army hospital the arrival and departure of families was a common happening. The Bishop family had two initial attractions that drew me right in: they weretwo beautiful boxers that my dog-loving side couldn't resist. Getting acquainted with the dogs meant getting acquainted with the two sisters who were always out in the yard at the same time. Mediated by a love of dogs my relationship with Sandra Bishop and her younger sister soon developed into a genuine playworld friendship.

I can't recall what all we did through those days of late summer. I just recall that Sandra was an outdoor type girl who wasn't about make-believe tea parties in the living room. And as the summer went on I realized that she was very pretty. Now the Bishops had two hugh old apple trees out beyond the kitchen. No one tended them, yet they managed to put out a good crop of sweet gnarly apples. Now one of my greatest talents as a boy was tree climbing. I had proudly conquered just about every decent sized tree for a half mile around. The branches of big apple trees are arrayed for easy climbing. The Bishop's apple tree was not a challenge to me at all so I couldn't resist the temptation to get an apple right from the tree. But how surprising and exhilerating it was the first time I went up it to find Sandra climbing right beside me. This was the first of numerous expeditions. As I demonstrated my lack of fear, and she matched it, we soon got into the habit of going as far out on a limb as we dared, picking an apple, then chomping away in our shadey bower, talking about who knows what.

photo by donsutherland on Flickr

Apples, A Member of the Rose Family

Now I was still a boy and into the type of teasing that little boys dish out to little girls in lieu of knowing how else to show they are beginning to care. In our case it came when we noticed dozens of unusual large wasps hovering just over the grass every warm sunny day. These were not the common paper wasps that built nests under our eaves. These wasps were larger and more colorful.

Periodically one of these wasps would descend into the lawn where it would move awkwardly through its grassy thicket. We would bend down close to see what it was doing. Then I got a great idea, one of those challenges that only a male brain would contrive. With a quick motion I grasped a wasp with thumb and forefinger on each side of the abdomen, much like holding a pencil. I held it up so we could examine it closely. We could see the little stinger going in and out vainly trying to find a target. Then the next idea struck. I pointed the stinger toward Sandra and told her she'd better run. She did, in that knowing way that said she understood the game. If there had been real fear she would have run into the house instead of running circles around the lawn pleading with me to stop. Later I showed her how to safely catch a wasp, and to my delight she was a perfect student. Now she had a weapon as good as mine and the running in circles ceased in favor of a logical truce between friends.

Schooldays came and then winter. Sandra was in a different classroom, there were no more apples to be picked, and I walked to school and she apparently didn't, so our closeness faded into a lull to match the season. Then came the day that a neighbor announced that Sandra's father had been transferred again and that they were gone in that mysterious way of military families. There were no goodbyes, only a crushing disbelief that the friendship I had automatically imagined stretching into my future was not to be. Much later there were memories. To this day, as much as I have looked, I have never again seen wasps like those of my apple tree summer. Nor have I ever tried to catch wasps that way again, although I know I could. My sole connection with those sweet apple summer days is that I have a wonderful loving daughter named Sandra, just a bit tomboyish, a lover of dogs and animals in general, and determined to be outdoors whenever she can.