I place a quick call to my parents, correctly guessing that they are just sitting down to dinner after another long day on the farm. They work sunrise to sundown, especially in the summer lavender season. I video chat with them for a few moments while they eat my mother’s homemade lentil soup, my father regaling me with tidbits of eco-farming news from the latest Acres magazine and my mother filling me in on all the current news in Sequim. I tell them about my teammates and our week of orientation, glossing over anything that might concern them—like the shark incident. Finally it grows late.
    “Have a wonderful time,” my mother tells me in parting. “We’re so proud of you, sweetheart.” Finished with supper, she is sitting at the dining room table, knitting socks for homeless veterans in Seattle, her cinnamon sugar curls a little wild around her head, her strong bony hands holding the knitting needles with practiced ease.
    “Don’t drink the water,” my taciturn father interjects from his scruffy plaid recliner by the unlit fireplace. “Be safe and use your head.” I can hear the rustle of his magazine pages. He’s drinking his evening hot toddy, the lemon and whisky laced with lavender honey from our bees.
    “I will,” I promise, bidding them both good night. “I’ll call you from Mumbai.”
    After I hang up, I sit for another moment in the darkness, breathing in the warm salt air, centering myself. A light breeze rustles the palm fronds above the cottage, and through the trees comes the distant, rhythmic lull of the ocean.
    Tomorrow I embark on a grand adventure, one I’ve longed for since I was young. I’ve never been on an international flight, never been surrounded by a culture and language different from my own. I’ve dreamed of this day for so long, and now that it is almost here, I’m filled with anticipation, almost a lust, to dive in, swim in the current of the world, drink deeply of the new and exotic and different. I am thirsty for adventure, for experiences, for a wider, wilder life.
    For a moment I picture Ethan, the image of his face accompanied by a pang of sorrow. I wonder what he is doing right now, if he thinks of me, if he misses me. The loss of him still hurts, although the past month has mellowed the intensity from excruciating to the dull ache of a slowly mending broken bone. I shake myself. Enough pining over Ethan. He has made his choice. I have made mine. I can only look forward now. The biggest adventure of my life starts tomorrow.

Taken from The Enlightenment of Bees by Rachel Linden
Copyright © 2019 by Rachel Linden
Used by permission of http://www.thomasnelson.com/