Bumblebee

Last Sunday, the family and I went for a picnic. A former coworker with whom I had started working at my current position recently reconnected with me through Facebook. We’d always gotten along well in the time we worked together, but when she left for greener pastures and I stayed here, we lost touch. It happens, of course: you make a friend at work when you start on the same day; you go through the rigors of training together, laugh, make jokes about the difficulties, the personalities of the people training you; you commiserate about things you’re not getting the hang of, hang out at office parties and happy hours. And this, despite all my complaints about social networking, is actually when it works best. Used to be, you created this type of work friendship and it weakened when someone left the company, if it didn’t dissolve entirely. Nowadays, however, we can find each other. And it turned out, this former coworker/friend has a daughter the same age as mine. A series of messages along the lines of “Let’s get our families together for an outing” followed, and we decided on a picnic last Sunday.

The weather, unfortunately, wasn’t agreeable. After a series of nice days, the one we choose to head to a state park and partake of vittles, the temperature had to drop and it rained two days straight beforehand. There is, naturally, some trepidation in reconnecting. Is the conversation going to flow? Will we be able to pick up the same rapport we had when working together? As we left the house to drive to the park, however, I told my wife, “I think the two of you will get along. She [my former coworker] seems to be into the same type of DIY stuff you’re into. Crafts. Making food. I think you’ll have stuff to talk about.” And it turned out well. I didn’t feel the slightest bit of awkwardness, and despite the chill in the air, it was nice to connect with a couple who have a child our daughter’s age that we enjoyed hanging out with.

I suppose this isn’t uncommon when your kids are still as young as our daughter is. It’s the case where people we knew in the past, in our working life and social life in our twenties, also had kids around the same time we did, so we can reach out and say let’s get together, let the kids play, and we get to enjoy ourselves with other parents we like. But I’m assuming this changes as your kid chooses her own playmates, as you have to connect with parents you have little reason to connect with aside from having children who want to play together. I’m actually kind of dreading it. But in situations like the picnic, it’s of less concern that the adults will find common ground since we’ve hung out in the past, as the kids find common ground, since they’ve never met before and are being forced into socializing based on the fact they’re the same age. I was worried about this too. Our daughter can be standoffish, though this has been changing since she moved from daycare to preschool. She used to hide behind my legs whenever meeting another little girl at the park, and she did this for a bit when we first met my friend’s daughter, but it wasn’t for long, and after maybe fifteen minutes the two girls were kicking a soccer ball around and playing well together. We ate a little food and chatted. When the girls wanted to play on the playground, my former coworker’s husband watched them, and then we switched and I watched them.

At one point, while we were eating, I spotted a big fat bumble bee buzzing around the edge of the picnic bench near my daughter, and she spotted it too. “Just be cool,” I told her. “Leave it alone, and it’ll leave you alone too.” But as we were driving home, my wife noticed a buzzing. “Is there a fly in the car?” she asked me. We were on the turnpike. I turned around. “I don’t hear anything,” I said. Then I heard it and turned around. The bee rose into sight in the hatchback. It must have stowed away in the bags of food, and I mean this sucker was huge. It was a bumble bee the size of a cicada killer. “All right, stay calm,” I said, more for myself than my wife. She pulled over to the shoulder, and I got out, careful to not get hit by oncoming traffic, and popped the trunk to let it out. I wish I could describe it the way it happened. It was like an attack chopper rising and hovering in the back of our car. Well, we arrived home safely, and our daughter had fun. She was sad because earlier she’d made a picture out of her stickers to give to my friend’s daughter but we’d forgotten. I talked to my friend later that day and told her. She replied that her daughter had been upset that she’d left behind the dandelion our daughter had picked for her. As far outings with young kids go, I’d say this is the mark of a successful day. My wife and I had a good time too. We hope to hang out with them again.