When we were little, we used to catch bees behind the house next-door, bees that sat on pears that had fallen from the tree and were rotting.

We would quickly sneak up on a bee, lower a glass jar over the whole pear and, if we were lucky, catch it.

We were only five or so, Jerry Baumann, my next-door neighbor and I.

The bees would then rush and hit against the sides of the jar, they would try to get out the top, but in time they would crumple up and lay down at the bottom, their wings flapping ever so slightly, their breathing labored, the exuberance of their former flight --- no more to be seen.

Then, we'd quickly create schemes to save the bees --- punch holes in the top of the jar for starters --- that was always a good idea. We’d put in bits of grass and flowers and dandelions, things we thought they would like to eat that would make them move again.

But, invariably the bees would get weaker and weaker ---in spirit if not in strength, and we'd watch as the bright, yellow, fluffy things that had been flying around enchanting us, batted up against the walls of the jar a few more times, then dwindled there before us --- no matter what we did.

Usually, we were lucky enough to let them out in time and, at first they'd be quizzical, but then they'd gain strength and slowly fly off --- to the sky, to the trees, to the flowers where they belonged.

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I've been thinking lately about the catching of bees when I was five or so, thinking of the bees as an analogy to the people we say we love --- how we are attracted to them because they are yellow and fuzzy and free and because they FLY but, then, we try to put them in a glass jar, confine them to a small space, throwing in odds and ends of food and air we think they'll like; how we watch the very person we were attracted to just dwindle away and dry up, laying quietly on their side on top of a few tufts of grass