Men are like that, Mom used to say. They can’t laugh or fake it on cue. Or act as if everything’s fine, thank you. Some days I can’t either. Like last night, I tried writing an elegy for my dad. A therapist, suggested it might help with the grieving, recalling all the nice times. I tried. Honest to God I did. Then I gave up and started cleaning the house, sweeping dead bees from the window sills, fingering their fragile wings, remembering the day I saw my dad covered with bees.

It was spring, and the queen must have just arrived. I was only six, and I wanted to scream, but I was afraid the bees would hear me and sting him. I didn’t know if bees could hear, but I thought, with all that buzzing they do, they might. But bees never stung my dad. He kept them in silver nests behind the chicken coop. Sometimes at night the bees would fly into our house through the broken screens and bop around the lights, and he would catch them in a napkin, hold them gently, then shake them loose outside. My father liked to say that we were gods for the bees, saving their lives and setting them free. That’s what I do best, he’d laugh.

Nights my father walked the dirt path past the cow barns to the bees he kept in silver nests. There haven’t been bees for years. That’s how old he was, but he never did stop lecturing me on how to select the right kind of man. A honeybee, he always said, travels to the same kind of flowers. Why? Because a clover bee is meant for clover. I asked if he knew if the bees slept, and if they slept, did they dream. I liked orange blossom honey best. There were bees in our house, climbing the screens. Wasps too. My father caught them in a handkerchief and shook them loose outside. Whenever I tried, I squeezed too tight and broke off wings and legs. He always did say I’d never learn. I was like any fool woman. I was too full of fear and grab.

|