When I was a kid, we used to play this game called Freeze Frame! Everyone runs around and then one person yells FREEZE FRAME! You have to completely freeze in your steps. The first person who moves, even the slightest, is out. You keep playing until there is just one person left. As I got older, we stopped running around to play the game, but my friends and sister, and I would sometimes take advantage of the power of yelling Freeze Frame! and if someone was being annoying or even just to be funny, out of the blue – we would call it to stop one another in our tracks. It was more or less part of our lexicon.

In this moment, I am overcome with the strongest sensation of someone having just yelled FREEZE FRAME! – at me.

On November 5 – in the midst of a week of discomfort and tension, post-election day – the Bee Hive celebrated its ninth anniversary. The store is officially on the road to its tenth year. In honor of that, I have been thinking a lot about what direction I would like the Bee Hive to take. How it might be able to grow as a business, as well as how it may better serve the community in the forthcoming ten years, and beyond.

I can’t reveal anything about the plan right now – because, well – I’m frozen….

As I locked up the store on the last day it was open for customers, before the shut down – It almost seemed like I felt it slump in disappointment. Like a kid so raring to play, but being kept inside. The pause button has been hit on the physical store front of the Bee Hive – bursting and poised for The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year. (But, the magic continues behind the drawn blind on the front door.)

In this moment, I am overcome with the strongest sensation of someone having just yelled FREEZE FRAME! – at me.

Meanwhile, at home…Cash and Olive are devastated that the activities each of them had to look forward to after school – the things each week that have been getting them around other kids and keeping them going  – have been canceled. Devastated that they are getting farther away from going back to school, rather than closer. I have been doing my best to come up with things we can look forward to – We will re-watch all the Harry Potter movies (except the second one – too scary)! I will make sourdough waffles – every day! They can pick whatever dessert they want for Thanksgiving dinner! They can read piles and piles of books. And, I have a feeling, many, many Christmas movies are in my future.

And, while I have been working to soothe my kids. I have been comforting myself with the idea that the phone will still ring at Bee Hive. UPS will still deliver books, and I will still be able to fill orders and be of service to customers who feel books are essential items; small businesses are essential places; and, reading is as essential as food and water. As disappointed as the little white house may be – book fairies don’t rest. Thank goodness.

When we are safely on the other side of all this and Bee Hive is no longer frozen – I look forward to throwing the doors open and sharing with the community all that I hope to make happen over the course of the next year and beyond.

In the meantime, I am going to try really, really hard not to move.

Because, honestly, it is such a drag to be called…OUT!