Describe your first kiss. Describe your most recent kiss. Describe your next kiss.
Once upon a time, if you had asked my to tell you about my first kiss, I'd have described to you a rather under-whelming (but retrospectively humorous!) encounter with an older boy (by a whole year!) on our gifted program retreat to Dauphin Island.
But today, as I sit here writing after putting my son to bed, today when I think of "my first kiss", I realize that moment of mutually-awkward-fumbling was not the one that matters.
No, my first kiss was pressed to my brow just moments after my birth, when my head was tiny and fragile and covered in skin softer than the air newly surrounding it. I had just become my own separate person, and it was then I received a kiss of love so true I will never have to fear falling into an enchanted slumber.
My most recent kiss was with my husband: the sort of in-passing kiss that becomes so common among people who have been partnered for any significant amount of time. A brief pressing-of-lips to reaffirm that yes, we are still mates, we still have the right to this small intimacy. We are tired these days, worn out from discovering our roles as parents in addition to spouses, but we will never not make time for kisses, for touching, for love.
My next kiss will surely be on my son's sleeping head, because now I've sat here contemplating the full range of kisses, the full range of love, and it is the only answer my poetic soul will accepts: a return to the beginning, to keep the spiral slowly spinning onward, forever and ever.
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