Kissing

My Beautiful Boy is learning to kiss.

When he sits on my lap, I lavish kisses on him. And he climbs up on me, his little face looming, considers for a moment, and then presses his little lips against my cheek. But he can't quite figure out how the suction bit works. His lips just rest there. And there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of saliva involved. Rivers of saliva.

The other night, he went to kiss me on the lips and stuck his little tongue out. Very disconcerting! There was a slightly wierd, Oedipal feeling about the whole thing. Not to mention the flashback to being pashed by some spotty thirteen year old, who hasn't quite realized that lips should arrive before tongue. Thanks for bringing back that memory, kid.

But recently, in a dazzling display of all his latest new skills at once, he spontaneously walked up to me, pressed his lips on my cheek, gave me one of his sweet, shy smiles, and then turned around and walked away to go back to what he had been doing. I was so touched, so delighted, by this spontaneous display of affection and all-round cleverness.

It was the greatest kiss I've ever gotten. So my boy likes me after all!

And, you know, it reminds me how important kissing is.

Now, my partner is a great, and I mean a great, kisser. He is not one of your thin-lipped men. No, he has full, sensuous, curving lips. And he knows how to use them. And I have been told that I am a pretty good kisser myself.

So why don't we kiss more? Why don't we snog like teenagers?

There is something about domesticity, in my opinion, that just sucks the romance out of life. And it isn't just children and mortgages. For years, we didn't have a child. We didn't have a mortgage. All we had was the kind of domestic routine people have when they have lived together for a long time. But there was something about that routine - the cooking, the laundry, the taking out of garbage, the "Did you remember to buy the milk?" conversations - that was hostile to romance. And although we often hugged, we rarely kissed, except during sex. Any kisses during the day were brief and dry, like kisses from your grandfather.

Now, a little while ago, I decided to put a stop to this. When he gave me one of his grandfather kisses, I paused and then responded with a soft, lingering, romantic kiss back. He was surprised, very surprised, but I could see he liked it.

And we talked about the grandfather kisses. And now, just sometimes, we have soft, moist, tender kisses that remind us both that we are not just parents, not just friends. We might not be having much sex, but we are lovers. And we are great kissers!

Its just possible that my baby's Oedipal moment was copied from his dad.

Welcome to the kissing club, my sweet baby boy.