The Kiss

My life is so small it could fit on the head of a pin.  It wasn't always like this.  I was an interesting person who had stimulating jobs and diverse friends.  But now my main occupation is keeping the refrigerator filled.  Feeding my teen boys and all their friends, my life has turned into a giant loop from my house to the Jewel.

Each day I talk to the same Wilmette moms whose lives are similarly small, and we keep repeating the same conversations about where our kids might go to college, and what they are doing this summer.  Like my trips to the grocery store, these conversations are circular, never ending.  Occasionally, a new teacher or a bad grade or a varsity tryout is added to the mix, and we continue to stir and stir.

I am officially in a rut.

Before I was someone's wife or mother, before I had a minivan or a two car garage, I was young.  I dreamed of this life when I was a girl--dreamed of a handsome husband, and clever children, and a house in the suburbs.  This was my wish, and it has come true.  I just never anticipated these dry spells.

In an effort to remember what seemed so attractive about being a homemaker with wall to wall carpeting, I went up to the attic and found a box that hadn't been opened since we'd moved to this house.  It was labeled "Papers and Memories" and it had just what I was looking for.

Inside the box were high school yearbooks, letters from girlfriends, signed programs from shows I danced in, and well recorded memories of my young love life.  There were invitations to fraternity dances, and the carefully preserved corsages, and many letters from boys who had been away at college, or who had liked me from afar, or who were apologizing for some bad behavior.

But the best surprise in the box was a rubber band full of photos of old boyfriends.  Usually they were alone, smiling at me, the photographer.  Sometimes I am in the photo, smiling and mugging for the camera with my long hair and smooth skin.  I gasp as I go through them, remembering the law student from New York, my downstairs neighbor in college, the first boy I met when I moved to Washington. I realize that at some point I put all these pictures in one place and decided to save them.  I must have anticipated my current middle-aged self needing a drink from the fountain of youth.

I find a picture of my college roommate Karen, standing with me and a boy I don't recognize at all.  In the next photo, I am kissing him.  Not just a peck on the cheek, but a full face locking of lips.  I have no idea who he is.

I study it carefully.  This guy was never my boyfriend.  I had a boyfriend the year I lived with Karen, and this is definitely not him.  Is he Karen's boyfriend?  Is she daring me?  Is she taking the picture?  I don't know.

Perhaps I saved this photo as a representation, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, to remind me of all the other boys I'd kissed without the benefit of kodachrome.  Or maybe I was crazy for this boy, but after this kiss he never called.  Was I a girl who sometimes kissed boys I hardly knew?  When I'm unloading the dishwasher, or folding the laundry, or perhaps driving to the grocery store, I'll think about it some more, but I don't think I'll ever know for sure.

In the meantime, I've decided not to return the pictures to the attic.  I love them.  They remind me that I was young and beautiful, and I had many adventures before finding one special kisser.  I will continue to load up the refrigerator each day, thinking about the current boys in my life, and wonder where they might go to college or what they will do this summer.  But at night, when my rut is so deep I'm worn out by it, I'll look at the carefree girl kissing the handsome stranger, and I'll smile when I remember that it is me.