waggle dancing in the kitchen

a lesson from the bees in my backyard

The bees are starting to wake up in Tennessee.

I did a double-take to a small patch of clover tentatively flowering after our last cold snap, and saw the familiar zig-zagging pattern of a hungry bee. Sure enough, there it was, merrily floating from small purple flower to small purple flower.

I called the twins over, and the three of us laid our bellies down on the grass to watch it work. Every once in a while it would fly away (much to my two year old’s disappointment) but come back a few minutes later and start its dance back up again.

Did you know bees dance?

It’s called a “waggle dance” (I love when science chooses chaos!) and bees preform it to communicate where food is, how far away it’s located, what kind, and probably more details to which we humans aren’t privy.

“You dance in the kitchen with me, mommy?” my daughter asked the other day with so much sincerity I thought my heart would shatter. I managed to keep it together long enough to dance with her a few minutes until she got hungry and asked me for something to eat.

I waggle dance with my kids often. To Taylor Swift, to Chappell Roan, to the Mamma Mia soundtrack. It usually ends up being a family affair, with even my oldest getting in on the action.

We do a lot of spinning. A lot of hopping around the coffee table, limbs flailing cheerfully as I knock the volume up louder and louder until it’s all we can hear. Until the song vibrates our insides.

During lockdown, I’d force my only kid at the time to dance with me most days at 4pm— or Dua Lipa O’clock as it became. We’d look in each other’s eyes and clumsily bob around the kitchen, getting sweaty and ecstatic.

After the twins were born, I started waggle dancing in the kitchen more. The facade of “doing it for the kids” became opaque. I wasn’t doing it for them, I needed to waggle dance for me.

By most evenings, the adrenaline and cortisol of looking after 10 month old twins was spilling out of me. They’d sit in their booster seats with sweet potato all over their cheeks while I waggled and sang off key because it felt like I might explode if I didn’t.

Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight! / Won't somebody help me chase the shadows away? / Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight / Take me through the darkness to the break of the day

Sweat trickled down my sleepless face, I moved too fast to see the spit up stains all over my shirt. I’ve never thought of myself as a “dancer”, but for some reason the movements came unbidden. It scared and soothed me during a season where my brain felt like it was fraying at the edges.

The next day in the garden there are four bees. We are elated. I imagine our solo bee must have waggle danced out a message that went something like “Patch of henbit and purple clover three buzzes southeast of the fence. A few humans present, but mostly they stare and burst out in spontaneous applause. Socially awkward, yes, dangerous, no.”

Sometimes I wonder what I’m communicating with my waggle dancing.

Most commonly, it comes up for me when I need to know it’s going to be okay. Like my brain is saying: if we can waggle dance through this moment in time, maybe we will make it.

Sometimes it’s not enough that I’m only singing the words of the song. I have to act them out.

A feeling comes so fast and I cannot control it / I'm on fire, but I'm trying not to show it

I also feel this compulsion to dance when I go for a run in the city park near our house. It’s always busy, with sensible millennials walking their dogs, Gen Zs walking themselves, and everyone else either fishing at the pond, or grilling out under the pavilions.

What would they do, I wonder, if I just broke out into a silent disco waggle dance? What would it communicate to the rest of my species? Would they try to avert their eyes from the middle aged woman flailing her limbs on the green? Would they stare? Would they hold their children closer or… would they join in like my kids do?

But I hear the music
I feel the beat
And for a moment
When I'm dancing, I am free

I may not speak the bee version of waggle dancing, but I know in human world waggle dancing usually means things will be okay. Like, if we can dance, we can do anything. If we can jump and dip and reach and skip and shake and vibrate maybe life can be livable.

The truth is when I saw the first bee in my garden out there buzzing and waggling around the clover I almost burst into tears. It signified the end of winter, a winter that has felt long in more than one way. I needed that little buzz of hope, that reminder that sunny days are on their way.