Damned Wasps

 

September 18, 2016

Why do wasps ruin all the fun?  Not Muffy and Biff, but those dreaded hornets and yellow jackets that spend September slowly circling me like I'm a slice of juicy melon. They land on me, crawl up my arms, sneak under my shirt sleeves.   My teeth all but chatter as I try to stay still.  ( I may have wasps confused with bears.)  My husband likes to bat at them.  An act of provocation that will end with me stung  six ways from Sunday.
    I should pity the wasps.  They are essentially looking for their coffins.  Over the winter, all but the queen will die.  But I have no empathy as their mortuary is smack in the middle my favorite spot to sit in all the world  And wasps mean summer is over.
    My 50th high school reunion was last weekend.  I didn't go as I was two ferry rides and fifty years away. But the lead-up to the reunion brought lots of memories posted online.  I couldn't get over how many of my classmates were dead, especially the athletic ones.
   I ran into a girl from my freshman college dorm in the Edgartown Stop and Shop.  I wouldn't have recognized her without the Facebook connection.  Unbeknownst to me, she had once dated my husband.  Stranger and stranger, this whorl of memories.
  Later that week I met up with a girl from my Chappy days of horseback riding.  We had a long, lovely afternoon speaking of the past
   All these memories swarmed.
   But the wasps were louder.