Kissing My Kids

My favorite thing to do on this planet is… hold that thought. Maybe I should think about this. No, this song is true. Bring the verse, chorus, verse.

There is really no greater joy I find to be pure and good, than showering my children with kisses.

I sneak up behind them (the ones who can walk and talk well enough) and grab them by their necks, playfully pulling them backwards and catching them as they fall. I plant one after another of my lip smack bombs on their cheeky, darling faces and 93 times out of a hundred, it drives them wild with laughter.

At times, I will kiss their tears away and though it hurts that this must be done at all, it helps them to get through whatever awful feelings they are feeling in any given, crappy moment. This technique doesn’t always work. Sometimes it backfires and they use it as yet another excuse to scream at me. To get out their frustrations at my audacity. I haven’t read the room right. That’s OK. This too will pass. Breathe and carry on for the next round of kisses.

The baby gets it the worst. His entire chubbed-up face, his ticklish shoulders and arms, his potbelly gut and his piggy wiggly toes — they are the appetizer, the main course, and dessert for my affectionate assault. His infectious laugh makes angels weep, longing to be alive for such an indulgent feast! But oh that sweet baby! He knows he is a cute little heart breaker. Hah. Foxey.

The other two get in on it; I’m a role model for ever-lasting puckers and soft, pretend munchers. The girl starts up with her coos and sweet nothings, dropping her own face to face the gentle kindnesses on the wee babe. The boy dancing in the background bops up and down to the silent song not playing. For in this moment, in this room, in this now, all is love. He slows his erratic movements and bows down to his younger. Smiling, he gives his brother an inch-away eyelash flutter before backing away, back to his dinosaur stomp monster charade or whatever it is that comes next.

The girl is smiling all over and she joins him. They collide and complain but neither meant to. They shake their spastic bodies and run around like the wild things that they are until it gets dangerously close to too loud, then well past it. I tell them to calm themselves but there’s no talking to either of themselves. Not like this. So I grab one and flip him or her over. They fly through the air and I catch them and twirl them around and over my shoulder, down my back by their ankles and back again where I dip them and kiss their eyes shut right so they can’t see my true feelings, only feel them. Whichever one suffered first, the other begs “Now me!” and he or she gets it twice as good. Twice as Daddy.

Then back to the first again and it goes on and on like this until it stops. Until the next time, which might be soon.

You never can know.

And the baby looks up at us with wide-eyed wonder and thinks, probably, “So this is life, then? OK. So be it.”