The First Kiss

I remember the first time I kissed a girl.

It was not what I expected. You have seen the movies I am sure, the first kiss is always perfect, and it shapes their life afterwards right? The couple always remembers that first kiss. Well we flubbed it. Missed each others lips and everything. Thank goodness for me, this was not my first kiss with my wife to be. But the funny thing was that even though the kiss was bad, it was really good.

I don’t know how many of you remember your first kiss. I remember very little about the kiss itself other than it was clumsy and the way it made me feel afterwards. I remember kissing other girls after that, but none of them made me feel like that. It was like floating. It was a wonderful feeling. And it didn’t matter after that which girl I kissed it never felt like that again.

Well, almost never. Yes, I dated other girls before I met my wife to be. But she was something special. Usually the fact that you are dating is sealed with a kiss, but not with her. With the woman who would one day be my wife things were different. We had been dating for several days maybe as long as a week before we kissed that first time. You will notice that I said, several days maybe even a week. The truth is, we don’t remember for sure. But we do remember the date of that first kiss. We silently agreed never to talk about the real date and just accept the date of the first kiss as the “official” date.

Just like my very first kiss, our first kiss was a bit of a mess. I have no excuse. I mean I had done this before. It was her first kiss, but I had done this before. I should have been able to handle it. But that was the thing. With this woman, really very much a girl still at this point, everything was like the first time, all over again. But that is the way it should be right? I mean when you meet that person who is perfect for you, the past should not matter, and everything is new.

Fast forward 20+ years and there are days when we manage to miss on a kiss, and it still feels like that first kiss. I am not saying things are perfect, or that we are always happy. That is not it all what I am saying. But there are enough of those good, wonderful, glorious moments that they out weigh any of the bad.

This picture in particular, is one of those low moments but it has been, at least for the past year, one of those moments that has also drawn us together. We are older now, I have grey hair, at least the hair I have left is going grey. I get injured when I run too much, and I can’t pull all nighters and still function as well the next day like I could when we first met. My wife is still perfect in my eyes, I know she has changed too but she is perfect in my eyes. The thing is that we really make a great team. We know how to compliment each other. She really knows how to make me feel better when I need it. I think I know the same things for her. I am far from a perfect husband, but I do try.

That is, if you ask me, what marriage is all about. It is not that cloud nine feeling you get when you first kiss. That should be there of course, but there is so much more than that. There is the need to support each other when you are at the bottom of the ladder and it is so far up to cloud nine that you can’t even see it, and everything in the middle. There are going to be those days when you want to throw in the towel, and there are going to be those days when you wonder why the heck you would even think about throwing in the towel.

If I had a time machine and could go back to my younger self and tell me one thing, it would be this. Life is hard, but that first kiss, no matter how goofed up it is, is going to be one of those moments you will remember for the rest of your life. Remember it when you are at those low points, it will remind you of how good it can get. Remember that it is not all going to be like that, but those moments that are like that, are totally worth all the ones that aren’t.