It was my first kiss, Thanksgiving weekend 1970, barely a teenager. Oh sure, I had a kiss from mom on the cheek and forehead but this was immensely different. This was carved out of a sweetness of an unexpected moment that would never have its time again. We were talking about nothing, nothing I can even vaguely recall. Most days back then, I was just air to the world around me, never an attentions gathering place. She looked at me like no one before, I didn’t recognize myself. I felt this other life inside me emerging breaking away from my chrysalis; I felt beautiful for the first time. The fear and loneliness that shrouded my days dripped away like dew on a window. Then, there were suddenly no words, a silence that slipped through the back door. It was like the earth stopped rotating and we were swept away into the atmosphere like falling leaves in autumn’s wind.
Her lips were like a plum with its skin peeled back; I was just lost in her breath. There I was, sitting in a place I wanted to run from nearly everyday. Now, it was if I had a rebirth, every bruise, every scar faded away. This is not what I asked for because I didn’t know I could.
It was only for a moment and we never talked about it again. Though when it happened, I thought my heart was going to explode. The joy I felt was ineffable, I was connected to someone in a way grapevines spin themselves around and around each other.
I think about that day every Thanksgiving. I often wonder if she does. Though we lived in these cardboard, cut-out homes back on 12 Minot Place with a Chevy in the driveway and Wonder Bread on the table next to warm butter, inside those identical homes there were families with different stories held together by love and the pain that goes with growing up. And, there were moments, like The Kiss, of wonder and joy and the girl that saved me, if just for a moment.
Baked into my memory on Thanksgiving weekend 1970.
Frank G. Caruso
