FIRST KISS

I’m in this weird place right now. I’ve spent the day consumed by first kisses. Remember them? That first moment of connection that leaves you with that giddy high in the pit of your stomach. Those moments just before when you’re worried about your breath and your teeth and if your nose will go where it’s supposed to go. That moment after when you’ve replayed every second of it frame by frame, over and over again in your mind. When you’re enchanted by the sheer beauty of it or grossly disappointed by the excess slobber and bruising your mouth may have just taken.

I’ve had some great first kisses and some really bad first kisses. I remember a high school honey who had the mouth of a God. Kissing him was like flying on something so good you knew it had to be illegal. He actually wrote me a note in math class the day after our first kiss to ask where I’d learned to kiss so well. Unfortunately the math teacher intercepted the passing of that note, read it to the class, and our moment of sheer beauty turned into a moment of sheer hell.

Then there was the boy who thought he was a Hoover vacuum. That first kiss was also a last kiss ‘cause the fool damn near sucked my face off. You would have swore my lips were two dust bunnies he’d found clinging to my face and was intent on ridding my body of. Swore up and down that he had technique though!

I met a couple today who were arm in arm selecting a video to watch after their evening meal. They were high on life and love and at one point he leaned in to give his wife a kiss. You would have sworn from the expression on her face that she was being kissed for the very first time. I felt like I had been witness to a moment of sheer beauty. Jean and Wally are well in their seventies. We should all be so blessed.