"Could you open the Coke bottles for me?" I asked, and while the man walked back toward the kitchen, I dropped the Red Rose snuff in my bag and zipped it up.
I was speculating how one day, years from now, I would send the store a dollar in an envelope to cover it, spelling out how guilt had dominated every moment of my life, when I found myself looking at a picture of the black Mary. I do not mean a picture of just any black Mary. I mean the identical, very same, exact one as my mother's. She stared at me from the labels of a dozen jars of honey. Black Madonna Honey, they said.
I looked at the honey jars, at the amber lights swimming inside them, and made myself breathe slowly.
I realized it for the first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining brightly, and we don't even know it.
I thought about the bees that had come to my room at night, how they'd been part of it all. And the voice I'd heard the day before, saying, Lily Melissa Owens, your jar is open, speaking as plain and clear as the woman in navy speaking to her daughter.
"Here's your Coca-Cola," the bow-tied man was saying.
I pointed to the honey jars. "Where did you get those?"
-Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
This is the turning point in the book, and I would explain the context and summary behind it, but it would just take too long, almost as long as the Wikipedia summary. Although if you care, the Amazon review does quite a good job: http://amzn.to/buWtZ2.
In my senior year of high school, I got to do beekeeping with some of my friends for an elaborate science project. Literally covered in an unappealing white suit from head to toe with a screen in front of your face for sight, I wouldn't say it was the coolest of experiences. But we got to work with hundreds, thousands of honeybees kept in bee hives that looked much like filing cabinets.
And at the end of the day, the man in charge would take us to the parking lot, ask us to remove our astronaut spacesuits, and reveal a tray of pieces of honeycomb with pure, non-processed, bee-made honey on them. There lasted an initial, few seconds while I pondered whether or not it was safe to put a piece of honeycomb in my mouth as its cleanliness and disinfected-of-wild-animals-ness was questionable, but then I would pop one in anyway. It was waxy and so sweet it almost made me wince and although I (guiltily) couldn't tell the difference from this honey to the processed, manufactured kind in a bear bottle, I never gained a more glorious respect for honeybees that day. It was like I'd been so consumed in my industrial, GMO-lathered world that I had forgotten there were other species out there, not wanting to attack you or be cuddled, but actually working to produce staple food and take care of one another in peace. Miraculously, without having to plant factories and destroy the ozone layer as they do so.
I wonder how many turning points there are going to be before a heavy one actually throws itself onto your back and can't get seizured off until you do something for it. How many until you get sick of your routine, scheduled-to-the-minute, philosophical how-how-why-why ass and finally hear the world screaming at you, in the same tone it yells at Gulf Oil spills and McDonald's double cheeseburgers.
You probably won't figure it out if you try too hard to listen. The world is just weird that way. Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ