The Honey Bus

“I curtained my eyes with my shoulder-length hair, blotting out reality so that I could almost believe that I was safe inside a yellow submarine, below the surface, alone, and so far down I couldn’t hear any voices at all.”

The ongoing trauma of her parents’ violent fights and divorce follows Meredith throughout her life, leading her to seek escape in nature. In this early scene from her childhood, five-year-old Meredith hides under one of her favorite toys and imagines that she is under the sea in order to escape the violent reality of her present. The reference to a yellow submarine also references The Beatles, who symbolize nostalgia and yearning for better times in the memoir.

“Hissing steam rose, and when I released my grip, Matthew had turned into a blue glass totem, about the size of a soda can. He was trapped in the glass, and I could hear him screaming to be let out.”

Although Meredith is only five years old when her parents divorce, she immediately feels responsible for her younger brother, Matthew. This passage, from a dream she has on the plane to California, suggests that Meredith sees her brother as a vulnerable, fragile treasure to be protected.

“Inside, all the seats were gone, and in their place was some sort of factory of whirligigs, crankshaft gears and pipes. A metal basin about the size of a hot tub rested on the floor, and contained a hefty flywheel powered by pulleys as large as manhole covers.”

The memoir’s titular honey bus is an old army bus where Grandpa removes raw honey from the hives and processes it into jars. This passage comes from Meredith’s first exposure to the honey bus: Her description of the machines makes it seems like a complex, highly technical process. This description emphasizes the foreign nature of her new life in California.

“Mom had been in bed so long that she was becoming shimmery around the edges like a memory. I felt my mother more than I saw her, when she curled her body around me at night.”

As a child, Meredith does not fully understand her mother’s mental health condition and cannot understand why she stays in bed for months after arriving in California. This passage demonstrates the effect of her mother’s mental health on Meredith: She feels as if her mother is disappearing. May highlights the fact that “she curled her body around me,” suggesting that Meredith is the protector, paradoxically, in this dynamic.

“I’d been astonished to watch male lions play with their cubs, aquarium octopuses reach from the waters to embrace their human handlers, or elephants dig stairs leading out of a deep mudhole so a drowning baby could clamber to safety.”

The ability of animals to act with empathy is a point to which May frequently returns across the memoir. As Meredith struggles to make sense of her family’s sudden split, she finds comfort in the empathy and emotional intelligence of other animals, including bees.

“I didn’t know what divorce meant, but I caught the finality in her voice as she spat the word at him, and that told me all I needed to know—that whatever was wrong with my parents was unfixable.”

The tension of the memoir comes from the fact that the author, Meredith May, is able to see things about her life that the protagonist, young Meredith, is unable to understand. She uses dramatic irony to highlight her innocence as a child. In this case, although young Meredith doesn’t know what a divorce is, the author May is able to report the scene while acknowledging her own innocence.

“We continued on the narrow, winding road and soon the eucalyptus grove gave way to a cathedral of redwood trees.”

May’s descriptions of Californian flora and fauna throughout the book highlight the religious and emotional aspects of the natural world. For Meredith, spending time in the wilderness of Big Sur is an essential part of healing from the trauma of her parents’ separation and her sudden move from Rhode Island.

“Watching the queen bee work tirelessly for her family, and her children jostle to take care of her, helped me feel a little less bad about the family I had lost.”

Throughout the memoir, Meredith searches for replacements for her mother, whose mental health condition prevents her from caring for her children. Observing the role of the queen bees in her grandfather’s hive convinces Meredith that motherhood is a characteristic innate in nature. As a result, she believes that her mother will eventually be a good mother again.

“The first notes of ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ swelled from the speakers, took hold of my body and shook it. I felt heat ripple up from my stomach, rise up my throat and collect behind my eyes.”

Although Meredith does not fully understand her parents’ separation and divorce, she nevertheless carries the trauma of their separation with her. In this passage, the unexpected playing of a Beatles song triggers an emotional reaction in her because it reminds her of her father’s absence. May personifies the music and describes it holding Meredith and shaking to convey its power.

“The world was hard for her, and I needed to be patient because there were deep reasons from her past that made her give up the present.”

Meredith is characterized by her empathy and emotional intelligence even at a young age. Her visit to meet her mother’s birth father teaches her that her mother had her own traumatic childhood, and Meredith uses this to explain her behavior. Her mother’s behavior has a profound influence on Meredith’s childhood, despite her empathy, so this passage highlights The Lasting Effects of Trauma.

“I had seen insects displaying unconditional love. The nurse bees huddling against the rain were not the parents of the babies they were protecting. […] They were surrogate parents, just like Grandpa was for my brother and me.”

Throughout the memoir, May makes explicit connections between the behavior of her Grandpa’s bees and the patterns of her own family. Although her mother seems not to consider Grandpa her father, the bees empower Meredith to choose her own family among the adults stepping up to protect her as the bees protect the eggs.

“It took me a long time to uncap both sides of one frame, but Grandpa waited patiently, praising me and taking over when I got frustrated. Eventually I could remove a thin layer of wax and leave most of the honey inside the comb.”

Meredith’s grandfather is characterized by his patient, gentle nature with Meredith, which is contrasted by the cold, often callous treatment of her mother and grandmother. This passage, in which Grandpa teaches Meredith to uncap the wax frames, reflects his patience and kindness.

“All of us, humans and insects, in our separate ways, had traveled far, navigated dangers and labored to exhaustion for a shared obsession. We made this honey because we believed we could.”

The Interconnectedness of Plant, Animal, and Human Lives is a central theme in The Honey Bus. Meredith’s refusal to take full credit for the honey she processes with Grandpa reflects her belief that she is working alongside the bees in the production of honey.

“After a week of entertainment, my insides screamed yes, but talking secretly with Dad about leaving Carmel Valley seemed like I was being sneaky somehow. I couldn’t leave Matthew behind.”

Although she is only seven years old, Meredith feels the weight of familial responsibility. The inversion of parental roles in this section of the novel highlights the forces that caused Meredith to grow up fast.

“At some point while studying the star charts in bed, she had advanced from astrology to séance. I did not see this coming.”

Meredith’s mother lives with a mental health condition as a result of her own father’s abuse. As a child, Meredith does not understand her mother’s mental health condition and is often judgmental of her mother’s attempts to make sense of the world.

“‘Sometimes things get taken away from you,’ he said. ‘But you can’t let it get to you too much.’”

This passage is indicative of the folksy, nature-inspired wisdom that characterizes Grandpa. In this passage, he attempts to deal with the loss of his hives by explaining that that loss is part of the natural patterns of life. Meredith applies this wisdom to her own experience and the loss of her normal life.

“By now Mom had become more like an older sister, tolerating us when she had to, but mainly avoiding everyone with a restless impatience.”

Meredith’s tumultuous relationship with her mother Sally is at the heart of the memoir. As Sally grows older, she begins to think of her mother not as a parent but as a sibling. This reversal of parental roles forces her to mature more quickly than her peers.

“Bees-for-hire toil from February to August, which means that a typical honeybee in America spends more time on a highway than in the wild.”

Meredith is surprised to learn that many beekeepers lease their hives to industrial farmers in order to pollinate their massive fields. Grandpa sees his work as a beekeeper in opposition to this kind of industrial beekeeping. He believes that the bees should be free to travel where they want, rather than spending times shuttling between farms on highways. May juxtaposes the unnatural “highway” and the free “wild” to convey the suffering of the bees.

“I went limp, giving in to whatever was coming next. I closed my eyes and saw myself sinking toward the bottom of a dark ocean, floating farther and farther away from her. As I descended, it got quiet and quieter, until her screams dissolved.”

This passage comes from the climax of the memoir, in which Meredith’s mother hits her for the first time. In order to escape her mother’s abuse, Meredith mentally removes herself from the present and imagines she is elsewhere. The memoir suggests The Lasting Effects of Trauma.

“Not only did bees have language, they were democratic. They researched, shared information, discussed options and made collective decisions, all for the betterment of the whole.”

Throughout the memoir, the behavior of beehives symbolizes mutual cooperation and care. In this passage, May personifies bees by portraying them as capable of political thought by using the word “democratic.” The bees offer a stark contrast to the tyranny of life with her mother Sally.

“She wasn’t consumed by any of those things that can steal a mother and really screw up a kid. Our mother simply wasn’t.”

May’s (lack of) relationship with her mother is the driving force of the memoir, and her struggles to understand her mother are at the heart of the final chapters. Before learning of the abuse Sally survived in childhood, Mary cannot understand why her mother is so distant and cruel. In this passage, May suggests that her mother fundamentally lacks a mothering instinct.

“Back when she was a little girl, how could she have ever understood that she had done nothing wrong? How can a kid make sense of adult rage?”

As a teenager, Meredith demonstrates empathy for her mother, especially after learning that her mother faced abuse from her birth father. The irony of this passage is that Meredith also faced abuse and struggled as a child to make sense of her mother’s adult range.

“He showed me how bees are loyal and brave, how they cooperate and strive, all the things I’d need to be when it was my time to navigate solo. Grandpa had been quietly teaching me that family is a natural resource all around me.”

This passage is a thesis statement for the memoir as a whole. It highlights Meredith’s dependence on Grandpa as a child and her use of bee societies as a model for human living.