Back quite a few years ago, I was on a month-long dance residency in Germany. I was having the time of my life: we’d wake (often early), head into the dance studio to dance, break for an afternoon of home-grown vegetables and salads, go for a swim in the local creek and then get back to dancing-eating-heading upstairs to crash to sleep routine. It was the first time my dancing had connected so powerfully into nature and my surroundings. And I think perhaps the first time that dancing was so effortlessly injected into my day. It was bliss.
Amongst this, there was a shy blonde, blue-eyed boy. He wasn’t there to dance; he was there to help maintain the property and assist with the local growing of food. He’d come over from Poland, and over the course of the month we’d started to talk a little in broken English and broken German, then a little more. This was no gentle nor grand romance. In fact, there was no romance at all. But this lovely boy had such a steady presence and his conversations – his life – were so different and interesting from my own.
One day, knowing I’d worked as a remedial therapist, he brought up his chronic back pain. He asked please, could I help, it was quite debilitating. At this stage I’d just left a life of London dancing and hadn’t treated anyone in over two years… I’d help but, I wasn’t confident in my abilities and no, there’s no way I could accept payment for such a thing. Over the course of a treatment or two, he began to feel relief and me? I was just happy that I could still help someone.
A few days later, this boy approached me and gave me a jar of honey – it turns out he was the resident beekeeper, and he wanted to repay my kindness with some of his own. It was the most delicious honey imaginable. It helps with hay fever, he said. Eating local honey, which has been created from the local pollen in the area assists in creating an immunity to the local allergens.
Ever since, I’ve tried hard to buy local honey when I can. I’m so thrilled that at our local farmers markets there is local honey for sale, and it is insanely good. (A little bee also told me that my neighbour keeps bees too…). I brought it out this morning, to spoon over my oats and it reminded me of this gorgeous boy, with his gorgeous honey, in a place where I was so connected to everything I love.