Eileen Garvin, THE MUSIC OF BEES: A Novel
[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:47]Here's a little snippet by one of the authors from the anthology.
[0:50]My name is Emily Liebert, and I'm thrilled to have contributed to Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:56]My essay is called My Father Immortal, and what I really don't have time for is inauthentic people.
[1:03]Eileen Garvin is the author of The Music of Bees.
[1:06]She is a beekeeper and writer living in Hood River, Oregon.
[1:09]Her memoir, How to Be a Sister, was published in 2010.
[1:12]The Music of Bees is her debut novel.
[1:14]Welcome, Eileen.
[1:15]Thanks for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to read books to discuss the music of bees.
[1:20]Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
[1:22]What do you mind telling listeners what your book is about?
[1:25]I'd be happy to.
[1:27]So the Music of Bees tells a story of three lonely strangers who meet by accident on a beekeeping farm in Oregon.
[1:34]And you could say that each one of them has been sort of wounded by life.
[1:38]There's three main characters.
[1:40]Alice Holtzman is 44.
[1:42]She's an overworked, underappreciated county employee.
[1:45]And Alice has recently lost her husband.
[1:47]And she's just sort of reeling from this loss.
[1:49]She's sort of a loner and never expected to meet anyone.
[1:52]And so this particular loss is very hard for her.
[1:55]And then there's Jacob Stevenson, who has the tallest Mohawk in the history of Hood River Valley High School.
[2:01]And Jacob is a sort of mouthy, upstart kid.
[2:04]And he's just graduated from high school.
[2:06]And he's kind of on his way, leaving his parents house in the sort of Potong town he's grown up in.
[2:11]But he has an accident at a high school party and has ended up in a wheelchair.
[2:16]And it's just grappling with this tremendous change in his life.
[2:20]Our third in a unlikely trio is Harry Stokes, who at first doesn't seem like he has an obvious problem.
[2:26]But he's 24 and Harry's kind of made some bad choices, made the wrong friends and landed in jail.
[2:31]And now he's trying to find his feet.
[2:33]So the three of them meet at Alice's farm, which is located in a fictionalized version of Hood River Oregon, which is a town.
[2:40]I live it.
[2:41]There you go.
[2:42]Amazing.
[2:43]I was sort of taken aback by the Mohawk as the starting scene.
[2:47]And how you seem to have such a grasp on exactly how to do it.
[2:50]And like where you shave and how pointed it is.
[2:53]And the different sections of the hair and all of that.
[2:56]I was like, all right.
[2:57]Interesting.
[2:58]How did you do your research on that one?
[3:01]Well, clearly I don't have a Mohawk because you can see.
[3:03]But it's just one of those funny side bars that you get to do as a writer.
[3:08]When I, you know, of course, I have friends who've had Mohawks.
[3:11]I've seen a Mohawk.
[3:12]And I thought, well, this is sort of if I'm going to make this character have a Mohawk.
[3:15]This has to be realistic.
[3:17]And so I interviewed friends who'd had them in the past.
[3:20]Like what do you use and how did you make it stay tall and all this sort of thing.
[3:23]And I gave you a whole new respect for the time management that that particular hairdo requires.
[3:30]Well, I don't have a single friend who had a Mohawk.
[3:33]I have to say.
[3:35]I think my research would have had to be more extensive.
[3:39]I also like how you slowly explain, like you don't say right up front that he is in a wheelchair.
[3:45]Like you have to discover that.
[3:47]I found that really interesting.
[3:48]You kind of like draw the reader in and then you realize you're like, oh no.
[3:52]And then you have to shift everything you've been thinking about.
[3:55]What made you decide to start it off that way?
[3:58]Well, I wanted to give readers a sense of Jacob to begin with.
[4:03]And it was a little bit unconscious, I suppose.
[4:06]But that scene in which we meet him, he's sort of going through his morning routine.
[4:11]And he doesn't want to think about the fact that he's in a wheelchair and that his life has has the life that he had planned has been put on hold.
[4:19]So he's just distracting himself by doing his hair.
[4:22]And that's how we need him.
[4:24]Then of course in that moment, he can't escape the fact that at the end of this two hour procedure of doing his hair,
[4:30]he really has nothing else to do with this day because he stuck his parents house because of this thing that happened.
[4:35]And I just like that kind of indirect explanation and introduction to Jacob.
[4:40]I like that too.
[4:41]It was really it was beautiful.
[4:43]How did you come up with this idea?
[4:45]Like how did why these characters they aren't unlikely crew?
[4:49]How did they pop into your head?
[4:52]Like how did this become a book all of that?
[4:54]Right.
[4:55]Well, they came to me from elsewhere as I'm sure you've had lots of writers say.
[5:00]And I should say my background is in nonfiction.
[5:02]I started as a business reporter.
[5:04]I've done lots of freelance as a travel writer.
[5:06]And I wrote up my first book as a memoir.
[5:08]And it would nonfiction your beginning with a pile of facts.
[5:12]And then you figure out the craft is sort of putting together the order and all that.
[5:16]That's where the creativity lies.
[5:18]But fiction was really outside my experience at all.
[5:23]And the story came to me when I was I was driving to a farm.
[5:28]I'm sorry.
[5:29]I think you're done.
[5:30]Yeah.
[5:31]My dog always is like shaking and rattling.
[5:34]Yeah.
[5:35]She might she might show up here in a minute.
[5:36]She's really bored with me right now.
[5:38]So I was driving to a farm in my town to pick up a new package of bees because I am a backyard beekeeper.
[5:44]My hive had died and I was I needed to buy a new package of bees.
[5:48]And that is exactly what it sounds like.
[5:51]It's like you buy a box of bees and it's buzzing with bees.
[5:54]And so I was driving pick them up and I passed I was passed by a young man in a wheelchair with this tremendous
[6:02]Mohawk.
[6:03]And I noticed when you know something you notice number one because it's a country road.
[6:08]It's a small town.
[6:09]And you don't see a lot of Mohawks in Hood River.
[6:11]And I also noticed that he was very fit looking and Hood River is a pretty sporty town.
[6:16]We have a lot of Olympic athletes to train there.
[6:18]We have a lot of Paralympic athletes to train there.
[6:20]And I figured that must be who this guy was.
[6:22]But I didn't know him.
[6:23]He passed me and the first line for the story.
[6:27]Jacob Stevenson has had the tell us Mohawk in the history of Hood River county high school just popped into my mind.
[6:33]And I pulled over and jotted it down.
[6:36]And was just you know that feeling you get.
[6:38]I have to do something with that.
[6:39]And I went and picked up my bees and then went home.
[6:42]And the next morning got up and the dog that was just making some noise had just had surgery.
[6:47]So I just kind of sit with her and keep her quiet.
[6:49]And I sat down and just started working on the story.
[6:52]And I worked on it every morning for the 12 weeks that she was in recovery.
[6:57]And by the end of that period I kind of had had met.
[7:01]I'd met Alice.
[7:02]I'd met Harry.
[7:03]And I was sort of getting a sense of how they all came together.
[7:06]And it was really wonderful, a wonderful experience to just follow that thread every day when I got up.
[7:11]and see where they were going to take me.
[7:13]Wow.
[7:14]I love that.
[7:15]And I love how you so casually throw in that you are picking up your bees.
[7:18]This is like the most normal thing people do over the course of their day.
[7:21]Right.
[7:22]I know.
[7:23]Why don't you explain your career here.
[7:25]Right.
[7:26]So I'm a backyard beekeeper.
[7:27]It's definitely very much a hobby.
[7:29]I know.
[7:30]I know lots of beekeepers that have, you know, and anywhere from.
[7:34]From 10 to 100 hives, but I just have two.
[7:37]And I got interested in beekeeping in 2014.
[7:40]Honestly, because I wanted to have chickens, but I thought they'd be too much trouble.
[7:44]So I decided to get into beekeeping.
[7:46]I had some friends that were doing it.
[7:48]And it's one of those hobbies that for better or for worse, you can kind of get into fairly easily.
[7:53]Where I live in Oregon, you can buy a package or nucleus of bees to get started.
[7:58]And the hives you can order through the mail and put together.
[8:00]And I did all that and can start with a book.
[8:03]And so I really, the first couple of years, I really made lots of mistakes.
[8:07]And I mean, I should back up and say to begin with,
[8:10]bees don't need us really.
[8:11]Like they don't, they can kind of get along without me.
[8:15]But I really wanted the experience.
[8:17]I wanted to learn about that.
[8:18]I love honey.
[8:20]So I started keeping bees.
[8:22]And more recently, I joined the Oregon State University master beekeeper apprentice program,
[8:29]which I mentioned Jake also.
[8:31]Well, I don't want to.
[8:32]Anyway, that's some detail about that in the book, but to learn more to study more formally.
[8:37]So I'm actually right now completing that program.
[8:41]And that allowed me to really, they do a terrific job walking you through everything you need to know.
[8:46]And there are field worksheets you do with your mentor.
[8:49]So my mentor's name is zip.
[8:51]No, no, for reals.
[8:54]His name is zip.
[8:55]And work the hive.
[8:56]And then there's an exam at the end.
[8:58]So that was really fun.
[9:00]As I was revising the book to be studying more formally and thinking,
[9:05]OK, I've got to put that in there.
[9:06]And here's a fascinating detail about bees.
[9:08]And I'm going to make this part of the story.
[9:11]Wow.
[9:12]That's amazing.
[9:13]And just love that.
[9:14]Amazing.
[9:15]Well, you also, in addition to this book, and not to stop talking about the book or the beekeeping or anything,
[9:20]but beekeeping also, of course, plays into your essay that you wrote for most now time to write.
[9:25]Yeah.
[9:26]Which was called beekeeping through the seasons of grief.
[9:28]What these taught me about love, loss and remembrance, which was just beautiful.
[9:33]And thank you for writing this for us.
[9:34]It was like amazing.
[9:36]Maybe you talk about what this essay was sort of about and how you tracked the seasons of grief essentially.
[9:43]Sure.
[9:44]Well, it was the beekeeping was a fairly reliable practice last year.
[9:49]When everything else sort of went out the window.
[9:52]And so there's very, very specific tasks that one needs to do during the course of the season in winter.
[9:58]You're sort of.
[10:00]sitting where this begins, you're sort of hoping that they're still alive and you're going to see
[10:05]them starting to take their cleansing flights and then in spring you have your maintenance projects
[10:10]and in the summertime you're hoping for the honey flow and in the fall you're sort of
[10:13]redding them. So the structure there was really just the solace that I took in having that
[10:20]to go back to last year when so many other things were unavailable. My father passed away in
[10:26]January of 2020 really quite suddenly and we were very luckily able to have his funeral because
[10:33]it was before things shut down but I was thinking about him as I was walking through those projects
[10:41]and feeling I think very much the isolation of not being able to be with my family and because of
[10:47]course grief doesn't happen in one moment you don't just have the funeral and then you're
[10:51]move on with that was really yearning to be with my brothers and sisters and my mom and that
[10:56]wasn't possible so I was thinking about them thinking about him and he was a really funny guy I
[11:02]loved him very much and he was not the most accessible person but the beekeeping is something that
[11:10]I like to joke and I forgive me I can't quite remember if I put this in the essay but my dad was
[11:14]a guy who liked to talk about the Civil War golf and medicine because he was a retired physician
[11:21]and so if you didn't have anything to say on those three topics it was really you know he
[11:26]just really wasn't gonna waste his time pretending to be polite and interested in what you had to
[11:30]say and I am not interested in golf nor the Civil War nor medicine and so you know we had that
[11:37]one of those relationships where it was sometimes hard to connect even though there was a lot of
[11:42]affection there but he was also a self-taught carpentry made beautiful furniture for all of us
[11:47]and so when I took a beekeeping it was very specific and you know quasi-scientific practice this
[11:53]was something that I could talk with him about and so he was always interested to know what I
[11:58]was doing from the moment I got interested and I bought the hives and was putting them together and
[12:03]he was interested in construction and then the tasks that followed that was something that we could
[12:08]we could really talk about and I loved being able to do that I just love this whole bee
[12:14]fascination I mean I felt like when I did butterflies with my kids you know like that kit where
[12:20]you can make your own butterflies such like weight and then they grow and anything I don't know
[12:24]that's like the extent of my caretaking I feel like and then in the natural species world but
[12:30]this is well you've got you've got some humans to take care of so I'm sure that keeps you plenty
[12:34]busy that's true that's true yeah I lack these skills that the skill set you have which is pretty
[12:40]impressive and yes you did mention those things about your dad in the acid but that's okay it's
[12:44]always nice to talk about your parents love you had a couple lines that I just wanted to read
[12:49]really fast or at least one that I can find you said some moments are golden others like smoke
[12:58]like birds like bees like light on the lake like everything that rises are held briefly
[13:03]in our fallible human heart and move on like a swarm abandoning the hive that is gorgeous
[13:11]I mean this whole essay is gorgeous the book was gorgeous but I don't know you have all these
[13:15]like zingers that are or maybe I should say not zing I would be I don't know there's got to be
[13:20]a key joke in there but I well thank you it was it was a pleasure to write you know that's the
[13:26]fiction is fun in in its own way like I've described kind of chasing this creative thread but
[13:32]memoir and person us they which I know are a favorite of yours they really are I love them
[13:38]particularly for really two reasons I've been able to distill for myself one is that I find out
[13:44]what I think when I'm writing it and I know I think Flannery Flannery O'Connor or I can't
[13:49]think Joan Diddy and said one said I write to know what I think and the other said I write
[13:53]to know what I believe I'm paraphrasing badly anyway you get my point I get it it's the process
[13:58]that leads you to discover what's in your own mind and that's one thing I love and the other
[14:02]with memoir and personal essay in particular you really get to capture a moment because our lives
[14:07]are fleeting and the people we love die we die and so when we can capture in an essay or in a memoir
[14:15]our remembrance and that's just such a gift to a writer whether or not anybody reads it that's
[14:21]really a distinct pleasure I take in that kind of writing and tell me about your memoir yes I'm
[14:27]happy to tell you about it so my memoir is called How to Be a Sister it was published in 2010
[14:33]and I grew up in a family of five siblings we were all born within six years and big you know typical
[14:39]Irish Catholic clan and my second older sister Margaret has autism and her communication is very
[14:45]difficult for her so she has it really hard times she doesn't talk a lot and so when we were
[14:51]younger her well it was a household of hilarity and tragedy all all mixed up together and she really
[14:58]had a huge influence on me I was born when she was three and had just been diagnosed and so I
[15:04]never knew life without Margaret and I had this weird position as a sibling we'd like to joke that
[15:10]our birth orders all screwed up in our family because I was kind of responsible for her I always
[15:15]felt responsible for her because of the difference between us and I always wanted to write those
[15:20]stories like I was just saying about capturing it was sort of the family encyclopedia things that
[15:26]we joked about for years or crazy stories about things that happened at weddings and that was part
[15:33]of it but I also was in the moment of writing the story I had moved to Hood River from the Southwest
[15:40]and had been you know when I was living in Albuquerque able to sort of ignore this discomfort of
[15:46]being around her now I'm four hours away by car and I have to figure out how I'm going to
[15:51]connect with her reconnect with her as an adult so how to be a sister tells that story of my
[15:56]my journey to reconnect with Margaret as an adult while telling the backstory of all these
[16:01]the shenanigans that happened in our our lifetime together wow so did you always like to write
[16:07]I always like to write I really did and I never I danced around it for so long which is something
[16:13]when I'm talking to younger writers now I really like to tell people don't wait and don't
[16:18]wait I think I was waiting for someone to tell me that it was a good idea or that
[16:22]that I had talent or something but I just I never took any classes I didn't I studied English
[16:29]but I learned to read when I was three because my like I said that big family my oldest sister
[16:33]taught me to read when I was three and I have little books you know that I made in grade school like
[16:38]little yarn yarn and paper books but I you know I did practically every job you can do
[16:44]kind of around writing until I fell into it I was a tutor and then I was I worked in PR for small
[16:50]presses I decided to go to graduate school and teaching English after teaching English abroad
[16:56]and I was working I was had a little year in between my masters and my PhD of English and I
[17:03]had a year off and I was waiting to start that program and took a job in a newspaper and Albuquerque
[17:09]oh no this is so much fun this is what I want to do I want to write something edit something and see
[17:14]it published and have that and so that would after that it was it was all over and that led me to
[17:20]then personal essay and memoir and everything else so I just I wish I hadn't waited for so long
[17:26]and I'm so glad that I found my way in because it just it's the thing that makes me feel the most
[17:31]myself and I feel very lucky to have had the chance to engage in that way that's a nice way to put
[17:37]it something that makes me feel most like myself that's really nice I know I always wonder sometimes
[17:42]like the other day my hand was really hurting I was like what if I can't type like what if it's
[17:48]a point I would not able to write or you know what if I have ALS and I can't like communicate or I
[17:54]can't I don't this is like the crazy anxiety stuff that keeps me up at night but I'm like you know
[17:59]I'm so dependent on it as a form of you know mental health event right no I totally hear what you're
[18:06]saying yeah that you sound like a you've got that nerve you've got it deep in your core as well
[18:11]and I feel that way I'm sure you've had this experience too when you're you know you're traveling
[18:16]and you can't you don't have access to your pen and paper or something and it just feels like
[18:21]sort of a drug you know that this way of calming everything down by taking notes and coming up
[18:29]with ideas and it's really a wonderful way to explore the world I wonder what people do who don't
[18:35]live that way I wonder how they get their feelings out I wish I had a better way so this
[18:39]this guy takes a lot of time it does it takes a lot of time that's that is true and there's no
[18:47]direct way I don't know if you find that but sometimes if you you lose the the window because
[18:54]you know you're busy or somebody you have to go do something and you can feel that I really have
[18:59]this idea in the back of my mind and it's it's making all this noise in my brain while I'm
[19:04]supposed to be doing the rest of my life because I didn't get a chance to sit down today and work on
[19:08]that thing yeah yeah I just don't have as many ideas as you do that it's totally fine
[19:15]well I'm working on something right now and I'm feeling a little bit that way and it I've always
[19:19]been like since I was in college you know it all it all wants to come out at once and I'm really
[19:24]impatient with myself but I've got a good rhythm and I've got the dog who who insists on
[19:29]taking breaks otherwise I would be sort of just inside right now all day long I feel the same way
[19:35]I'm like thank god for the dog or I like might not go outside I mean my kids too but you know when
[19:41]I don't have the kids it I I'm very content inside my house yeah I'm like I never I would be I it's
[19:49]really bad especially I've been doing a job in this for the dogs anyway wait so what is it that
[19:55]you're working on now what can you tell us I'm working on another novel and
[20:00]I don't want to say too much about it,
[20:01]but I would say that it's similar to the music of bees
[20:05]and that it's about people with problems.
[20:08]All right.
[20:08]I guess, yeah.
[20:10]Awesome.
[20:11]And what advice would you give
[20:13]aside from what we've already discussed?
[20:14]But what else would you,
[20:16]what other advice would you give for aspiring authors?
[20:18]I am going to pass along some terrific advice
[20:21]that I heard from Sandra Cisneros,
[20:24]famous for writing House on Mango Street.
[20:26]I love her work.
[20:27]She has a new memoir called House of my Own
[20:30]and a new novel, a little novel out called Martita.
[20:33]I remember you that's also in Spanish
[20:35]that I just finished in love.
[20:36]And that's not what you asked me.
[20:38]But I want to pass along.
[20:39]It's coming on this podcast.
[20:40]Yeah.
[20:40]Her advice, which I believe she was being interviewed
[20:43]by Krista Tippett on being when she said this
[20:46]and this question, like, what advice do you
[20:48]offer aspiring young writers?
[20:49]And she was very specific, and I loved this.
[20:52]And she said, make your own money.
[20:55]Control your fertility and solitude is sacred.
[20:59]And I love to that.
[21:01]Because what she's saying is, don't make your own money
[21:04]so nobody can tell you what to do with your time.
[21:07]Control your fertility.
[21:08]Decide when you want to have kids
[21:10]and how many kids you want to have
[21:11]so that you have room in your life for your writing kid.
[21:15]And then solitude is sacred.
[21:16]And I'm sure you find that as well.
[21:19]One of the hardest lessons I had to learn
[21:21]was saying no to people.
[21:22]You have to, if you're writing, you've got to carve out
[21:27]some time for yourself.
[21:27]And that means saying no to people
[21:30]that you love, that are asking you to do things
[21:33]that you have to choose between writing and people.
[21:37]So I just thought that was so brilliant for her
[21:40]to offer as an advice.
[21:42]And much more specific than the usual just keep on trying
[21:46]and don't give up, which is also useful.
[21:48]But I just thought that was really what I like that a lot to.
[21:51]It's neat.
[21:51]It's a different, I like hearing a new perspective on it.
[21:54]And yeah, it's awesome.
[21:55]That's great.
[21:58]I can't even get a sentence out about that, see.
[22:01]You know.
[22:02]Anyway, well, I mean, thank you.
[22:04]Thank you for coming on to discuss the music of these
[22:06]and your great essay for most of the time to write.
[22:09]And yeah, it's been a pleasure.
[22:12]Thank you so much for having me.
[22:13]It was a pleasure to be here.
[22:14]Okay, take care.
[22:16]Bye.
[22:16]Bye.
[22:18]Thanks for listening to this episode
[22:20]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[22:22]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[22:24]at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[22:34]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[22:36]for the Sound Editing.
[22:37]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[22:39]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.