A Reluctant Thank You Note to Bees

Dear Bees,

Originally, this was gonna be a “Suck it, you can’t have him” letter in which I rub it in your face that despite your best attempts, you did not steal my husband from me. You and your little Matriarchal society (respect) drones may have attacked him with your butt swords (I don’t know how bees work and I refuse to look it up) upwards of 14 times, sending him into anaphylactic shock and me into a panic spiral, but all it did was prove that we can do hard things. (Dialing 911 doesn’t seem hard the same way you think catching ping pong balls in a Solo cup attached to your butt doesn’t seem hard when you watch Minute to Win It but then you actually try and sweet Jesus it’s hard in an actual emergency.)

But instead, this is a thank you letter. Thank you, bees. If you hadn’t emerged from your lameass rotten railroad trestle home to sting my husband, he wouldn’t have ended up at the hospital, and if he hadn’t ended up at the hospital, he might never have mentioned the random chest tightness he’d been experiencing, and then they wouldn’t have done the tests that led to the other tests and if you give a mouse a cookie yada yada, now we know he has some severely blocked arteries. Now we know that he has coronary artery disease and that he has to get open heart surgery. Which, you know, isn’t like a traditional Hallmark thank you card thing, “Thanks for bringing my husband’s heart problem to my attention,” {tasteful flower visual} but still.

So, thank you, bees. I want you to know what kind of man you sting-saved.

He is so funny, bees. So, so funny. One time we were staying a hotel where the maid would knock on the door every night and ask if we wanted “turn down service.” It seemed so fancy and unnecessary to us both, because why do we need this poor woman to come in just to pull the blankets down like one foot and leave chocolates on the pillow? Every time the woman said “turn down?,” Matty and I would sing Lil Jon’s “Turn down for what!” and die laughing. So one time, when the lady knocked on the door and asked her question, I dared Matty to sing-yell “Turn down for what!” Lil Jon style AND HE DID. And then he opened the door and asked if we could have extra chocolates because he knew I love me some chocolates. If that’s not worthy of an additional lyric to “Let’s Hear It For The Boy,” I don’t know what is.

He is the Best Dad. Not just in a Father’s Day #1 Dad mug kind of way either. You know how some dads seem like a guest in their own home when it comes to their kids? Like, “Oh, and what does this little lady like to eat?” She’s your daughter, a-hole, shouldn’t you know? Well, Matty is the opposite of that. He fathers the crap out of our kids. He’s fun, funny, attentive, and eternally patient with them. He knows that a family-size container of parmesan cheese is more like George’s weekly supply and that Hazy’s imaginary adult acquaintance is named Joseph Colny. (Actually, don’t hold him to that, but let’s just say he knows a lot of obscure Hazy/George trivia.)

He has a big heart (even if it has severe blockages). Even though he didn’t want a dog after all we went through with our first dog, I really, really did. So, he let me pick one out on the internet and have her shipped up from Alabama, and now he feeds her, walks her, bathes her, and on one unfortunate occasion, scrubbed her with 4 different kinds of extracts (you didn’t know there were that many, did you?) to get the skunk smell off of her.

He has my back. When I was miserable at my job, he told me to quit. He very rarely yells at ours kids, but if they ever dare disrespect me, I pity the fools. And every Chinese New Year, when my Chinese relatives insist he eats this fungus dish called “Fortune,” which has the consistency of wet drain hair, he does. For me. For us.

He lets me sleep in on Sundays. (That’s why I wasn’t there during the Incident, bees. I was leisurely preparing myself a cheese tray at 11 am while you launched an aerial assault on my best friend.)

Every Mother’s Day, he buys me two chocolate croissants and has the kids deliver them to me on a tray in bed. Every year I’m like, “Oh, I can’t possibly eat two chocolate croissants!” and every year he knows me better than I know myself. (Why does it sound like I only love my husband because he’s my chocolate guy?)

He sews my buttons and irons my clothes for me, because I can’t do either. Don’t judge me, bees, like you can sew.

He’s good in an emergency, even when it’s his own.

I’m not going to go into details, but once when I was super pregnant, I had to go through a “procedure” and the doctor asked Matty to “hold her left buttock” and he did. In short, he’ll do anything for me, and I’ll do anything necessary for him, so don’t let the necessary occur, bees. (Sigh, it doesn’t work as well when the her’s a him, Jay-Z.)

In short, you can’t have him and neither can some bum heart. So, um, thank you.

Reluctantly yours,

Natasha

p.s. Literally the day after I wrote the first draft of this, three of your people attacked me in the woods. One of you landed in George’s hood, one of you got in my goddamn buff/facemask, bees, and one of you clung to my hoodie drawstring like an asshole. In front of my kids! The ones who just had to watch their father collapse from, what was what? Oh yeah, YOU-STINGS. So thank you for exposing the heart disease and all, bees, but seriously, cut the shit.

*no one else was in the driveway where it happened so we’re going with calmly