A Family Motif

Once before my husband and I were married, we were having a popcorn and movie night at my place. As the newly-engaged often do, things became rather playful and flirtatious when we all of a sudden found ourselves in a tickle fight! Now, I am ticklish and he is not, so this was not a very fair fight! Gasping for air, I decided I'd surrender, but because I was laughing so hard the only thing that came out of my mouth was a shrill cry of "BEEEEEE!" Now I don't even remember what I was trying to say. "Be nice?" "Behave?" Anyway, it was shrill and grating, but it got my honey to stop. He stopped, until he started teasing me about my "beeee" scream! Because of this incident, we jokingly started saying "bee" whenever things didn't go our way. Work wanted us in when it was supposed to be our day off? Bee. About to run out of gas? Bee. The people at Burger King forgot to put cheese on the burger? Bee.

As is common in the military, my husband (or fiance, I suppose) almost immediately got orders to spend a year in Korea. So instead of planning our wedding, we ended up planning to spend a year apart. Now, the one good thing about being separated from your loved one is all the letters and packages you get to send each other. As the years go by, you will treasure your "mail order courtship" and many of the letters will come to mean a great deal to you, even after you are reunited. For my letters to him I purchased a little sheet of bumblebee stickers, because saying "bee" was our fun little thing.

....And we were off! Anything with a bee or bee-related we collected and sent to each other. He (finally) came back and we again began to plan our wedding. Unfortunately, our plans were thwarted again by September 11th. It was an extremely busy time for anyone in the military then, and as such our requests to take leave and get married were denied.

Another year later we were finally able to be married! I had such fun setting up our first little house on base, and such fun organizing all the bees we had collected since our courtship began.

Since then, we have continued to collect bees. They are in my kitchen mostly, but there are a few around the rest of the house. They have really become our family motif and it is fun to pick them up when I see something cute. Sometimes with his work schedule I don't see my husband very much, and I still sign the little notes I leave for him on the counter with a little hand-drawn bee.

The bee has represented fun and laughter for us, because that is how the whole bee thing began. But the bee has come to represent so much more. What do you think of when you think of bees? Sweetness? Definitely. Bees make honey and there are few things sweeter than that. Bees are hard-working. That is a value I wish to have and wish to instill in my children. Bees are a family, with all of them working together to build a hive, raise the bee babies, and gather honey for everyone.

For these reasons and more, bees have become our family motif.

Do you have a family motif? What is it, and did you choose it because it meant something to you, or simply because you found it cute or fun?

"Bee" well, everyone!