Kiss it Goodbye

I remember what it felt like to be kissed for the first time. The anticipation alone is indelibly imprinted in my mind, but the softness, the warmth, that connection of his lips to mine? It was on a Halloween, and he had snuck over to my house in the dark of late evening, where I met him on the back porch. I knew my parents would not approve, and he hadn't done anything in particular to deserve that kiss (a well-planned date, a flower, a song), and yet even in the scandal of it all, it was all I wanted. I was fifteen and a half and a junior in high school.

That first kiss set in motion a series of way, way too many subsequent kisses. Giving them away like they were nothing of value, except that they gave me some illusion of having some value myself.

Let me tell you something. Remembering that experience as well as I do, how it felt to be a teenager, the first stirrings of high-school love, the longings of my heart and a growing-up body does nothing to make it even an inkling easier to deal with my own children going through those experiences. When I learn of sneaking around and kisses? Well, I want to lock down the world, ground them all, and curl up in a ball and cry at the loss of their innocence and my own foolishness all at the same time. It feels like a betrayal in a way, but I'm not even fully sure how. (Don't ask Freud.)

Why, oh, why can't they just take my word for things and not have to try everything out for themselves? Because I've told them to save, save, save their kisses! I hate to see them chipping away at their hearts, giving pieces away that they can never get back.

I can feel the secrets climbing the walls of the house, like a fog. If only they really could understand the omniscience of a mother's intuition. (Then again, maybe it's good if they don't.)

Somebody's heart is bursting with the newness of an experience they'll remember forever today, I just know it.

Mine is broken and sad at the loss of something that will never be the same.

Karma sucks.