Of Kisses and Magic

The other night when Nikolai was racing through the house with his fuzzy navy socks on and one of his favorite toy cars in hand, he slipped. As his legs gave out from underneath him and his open palms slapped laminate flooring, he skinned his knee, and knocked the breath from his lungs. When it finally caught up to him, he was a heap of tears and a sobbing disaster. I put aside cooking dinner for a moment by removing heat from the pan so I could comfort him. Yet as soon as he felt calm again… he said something that left me grappling for words I couldn’t hold on to.   

“I’m so sorry you hurt yourself, can I kiss it to make it feel better?” I asked, my heart overflowing with empathy.

Sniffling he replied, “I know that’s not how it works mom. Kisses aren’t magic. They can’t make me feel better. My body just needs time to heal up!” He smiled sympathetically and embraced me in a hug before emptying my arms to resume playing.

I sat there frowning for a moment feeling as though my heart had somehow shattered within the walls of my chest. Kisses aren’t magic. The more I turned it over in my mind, the deeper the notion cut me. I tried to resume cooking and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling of despair. It wasn’t just the loss of childhood innocents that struck me so profoundly, though that was part of it. What really got to me, was the fact that the statement wasn’t true. At least it wasn’t true for me and in my heart, I felt that it wouldn’t be true for him either.  

I didn’t know what to expect when Rob met me at the airport a week before New Years Eve. We had been talking over the phone for months. My parents had screamed at me when they saw the phone bills that we had run up due to our non-stop conversations. I waited outside the terminal feeling breathless with my stomach twisted into knots. We weren’t officially dating. We had been friends for a long time, but this was different and when I saw him waiting for me, carrying a bouquet of roses… I knew that things between us were shifting.

Yet the chemistry didn’t fully ignite until I was standing before him in his parent’s rented apartment kitchen. When his arms slipped around my midsection, and he pulled me into him for the kind of first kiss that made it feel as if life itself had been put on pause. All the heartache of relationships past, and childhood trauma quieted within that moment. Rational thought left my head and the only sound I could hear was my heart strumming music into my ears.

I don’t remember kissing Nikolai for the very first time because I passed out. I had a C-section and after they removed him from my belly, I felt as if I was burning up. The last thing I recall saying to the nurse was that I felt hot all over. The last thing I remember feeling was the coolness of a temperature strip being placed on my forehead before blacking out. There are pictures of me kissing Nikolai’s forehead after the temperature strip had been placed but I don’t remember that part, and I don’t recall having seen his face.

Three hours later I woke up in a recovery room alone. My belly felt empty, and my baby was nowhere to be found. I didn’t know if they had taken him from me or if something horrible had happened. I couldn’t remember what he looked like because I didn’t recall having seen his face, nor did I remember if I had heard him cry or not. The pregnancy hormones were dropping, and I felt such a crushing sense of despair that I didn’t want to live.

When I was finally brought back to my room and Nikolai was placed into my arms where I could kiss his tiny forehead… I couldn’t contain the tears of relief and joy from flooding my cheeks. The same was true when he wrapped his tiny arms around my neck and kissed me back for the very first time. The magic that having him had helped to heal my body and had given me my life back plus so much more… was beautiful. I had gone several years bed ridden wondering if I would get the opportunity to be a mom at all. That moment felt just as powerful and just as healing as the first kiss I gave my beautiful boy on the day he was born… because I felt as if I had earned it.

There had been other kisses over the years that healed me as well. Friends who held and kissed my hand when I was in the hospital and my future was uncertain due to my health. Kisses that my own mom gave me throughout the years when I needed them most, and just-because kisses. Make up kisses, heartbreak kisses that gave me closure, and the kisses I gave to my husband before he left for Afghanistan so we could remember our last moments together for as long as possible.

These are the thoughts that ran through my mind as I was cooking that had eluded me within the heartbreak of the moment. Yet I knew that I had to rectify Nikolai’s notion on the subject matter before I forgot everything that I needed to say. When our meal was finished and the plates had been served, I took his small hand in mine so I could have his undivided attention.

“Remember when you fell today, and I offered to kiss your knee to make it feel better?”

“I remember.”

“Did my kisses make you feel better on the inside?” I asked

“Yes, I stopped crying.” He shrugged and smiled

“Your body will heal at the rate it normally does, that part is true but that doesn’t mean that kisses aren’t full of magic. They have a special way of healing your insides and when you feel good on the inside… you’ll feel better on the outside too!”

“OH! So, kisses are magic?”

“Kisses are the best kind of magic… because they are the kind of magic that’s real.”

I smirked at him before tickling him and attacking his grinning face with a million smooches. He squealed as he usually does and asked me to tickle him some more. When we were done laughing, I winked at him and told him to eat up before it was time to get ready for bed.

If you enjoy my blog, you may enjoy other things that I’ve written as well. Here is a list of some of my most popular posts. There’s no greater compliment than when people comment and share the things I have written with others, so thank you for taking time out of your day to spend it here with me. Happy Reading!

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