Bees and Dragonflies - A Short Story

The West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand has the biggest dragonflies I have ever seen, and the angriest bees.

Mum’s parents lived there.  Granddad was a coal mine manager but that hardly, if ever registered with me as a kid.  We would go there for holidays when I was five or six, me, my younger brother and sister.  They still are – younger that is. 

I don’t recall seeing much of granddad. I guess he was underground some where in those hills that sharply abutted the coast.  Must have been an important job  - a mines manager.  I respected him.

Grandma was like Gibraltar; she was wonderful, dependable, quietly loving and never flustered.  She was like this her whole life. I really loved her.

“Don’t go near those bushes next door” we were warned.  Of course we did.  We were kids.  What do you expect?  In one of the flax clumps next door was a beehive.  (It may have been a wasp’s nest.) One day we wandered over to it to see what would happen.  What happened was the script for Hitchcock’s, ‘The Birds.’  Angry and buzzing with intend they chased us  - swooping, stinging and stinging again. We ran for our terrified lives as fast as our little legs would carry us. They just weren’t up to it – we all got stung numerous times.  Running, yelling, panicked and screaming - that was both of my siblings.  Not me.  I was a silent sufferer – no longer.  We were warned.  It always amazes me how long that run to our house was – time is suspended when young minds are on overload.  It is like a dream – always running, never escaping.

We never went near that flax clump again.  But we did peek.

On one of these holidays and for reasons I don’t understand Doctors put me on some medication for something I was suffering.  They told mum and dad that it could have some hallucinatory side effects.  They never told me.  What it did was to magnify certain objects, not everything, just the wrong things.  Like dragonflies on the West Coast of the South Island.  We were playing out back one day when I noticed some dragonflies of enormous proportions.  The word dragon meant something on that day. 

Hallucinations are meant to be a night terror.  Not that day they weren’t.  These enormous creatures started flying around and I was sure they were intent on us kids, or at least this one.  It felt surreal, because of course it was, completely.  A quiet panic rose in me that quickly propelled me back indoors.  We stayed inside awhile as the whirling apocalyptic menace was no doubt still hovering waiting for us to reappear.  I wasn’t allowed to go back out which only confirmed to this young mind that they were really out there and they were huge.  Truth of the matter is my mother divined the cause of the panic.  She was a mystic, my mum.  She knew. I loved her.

However it wasn’t all hallucinations and stings.  The dragonflies shrunk and our wounds healed. 

The beach was a rugged, steep and stony beach.  Big stones smooth and grey under foot made it difficult to run, or do much at all actually.  But they made a great pit for a fire to cook potatoes and mussels in.  Big kiwi mussels, big West Coast potatoes. The potatoes were burnt to charcoal on the outside, all fluffy inside. We’d add butter, big dollops of it and spoon out the treat.  The mussels were huge. They were cooked and had prized themselves open.  They steamed as they cracked open and a salty flavour billowed out.  A gastronomical delight filled with memories of fires on the beach with dark cool nights. 

Bliss for a little boy. 

Dragons and fiery stings soon forgotten.