What Is a Kiss, Anyway?: Stories of the Pleasures & Perils of Parenthood

By Susan Lewis

Why does my six year old son hate kisses? Why does my three year old daughter want to wear the equivalent of ball gowns to the playground? Why does my husband limp when he has a sore throat? What is a Kiss, Anyway? is a collection of humorous and poignant stories about one womans attempt to make sense of family life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781469100586

Susan Lewis

Susan Lewis is the internationally bestselling author of more than forty novels as well as two memoirs. Born in England and having resided in France and the United States for many years, she now lives in Gloucestershire, England.

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Copyright © 2011 by Susan Lewis.

Some essays previously published by Parents Express and Philadelphia Magazine

Cover art and interior images by Barrie Maguire.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

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This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BEFORE . . . .

FROM WALL STREET TO SESAME STREET

LITTLE ONES

WHAT IS A KISS, ANYWAY?

I WANT TO WEAR A PAWTY DRESS

CURTAINS FOR A SONG AND DANCE MOM

WORKING AT HOME

A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE JUNK FOOD TUNNEL

MENU OF MAYHEM

NOT YET, ANDREW, NOT YET

THE LAST STRAW

WORKING THE NIGHT SHIFT

WHEN FATE TAKES A CHILD’S HAND

BATHING SUIT BLUES

SALTY SUMMER MEMORIES

DINNER DANCE

HI SWEETIE

GOING TO RITE AID

BIG QUESTIONS

AS THEY GROW

HIS GIRL

HAIR APPARENT

RACING THE CLOCK

SNEAKING AROUND

LIFE’S A BEACH (AND THEN YOU DRIVE)

OUT OF THE (FOUL) MOUTHS OF BABES

FISH STORY

THE WIFE (AND MOTHER) THING

ROYAL FLUSH

AW, MAN

DADDY’S ON THE PHONE

OH, YOU BEAUTIFUL DOLL

AWAKENINGS

THE WHEELS ON THE BUS

PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORIES

SALE AWAY

BATTLE OF WOUNDED KNEE

MOTHER’S NATURE

HAPPY SELF-WORTH DAY

KEEPING PACE WITH MOM

BRACES ARE A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND

UNPLANNED PUPPY

HOLEY WARS

GO FISH (AGAIN)

THE BIG SHADOW

GROWING, GROWING, GONE . . .

BED CHECK

BEAT THE DRUM SOFTLY

THE GIFT

HAIR TO DYE FOR

13TH BIRTHDAY GIRL

EIGHTY TEETH AND COUNTING

KISS THE UMPIRE

BEYOND GLASS SLIPPERS

ROAD TEST

DOCTOR’S NOTES

SOMEONE’S MOTHER

For my mother,

who kept asking for this book,

And for my father,

who told me to keep writing

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This collection of essays tracking parenthood, children and growth, has been—by definition—years in the making. After my education as a lawyer; turning to this work felt both very natural and completely intimidating. Among the writing professionals who supported me along the way, I am thankful to Barrie Maguire for asking me to join his writers’ group so many years ago, and to the writers and editors at Parents Express and Philadelphia Magazine—the two publications that gave me columns as I was beginning this writing journey, and where many of these stories originally appeared: Sharon Sexton, Cynthia Roberts, Larry Stains, Ben Yagoda and Eliot Kaplan.

After awhile, as my kids grew older (and learned to read) I stopped writing about them for magazines. Yet with the continuing encouragement and editing suggestions of writer friends such as Barrie and Larry, I kept writing about the parenting experience; some of these later essays have lived in a drawer until now.

I also thank everyone in my extended and nuclear family for being who you are—not just great material (well, there is that)—but truly wonderful friends who help me appreciate the many dimensions of this life.

BEFORE . . . .

My child’s first cry astonished me. I had never heard a sound like it.

It was 11:20 on a Saturday night, and I lay draped in sheets on a table in an operating room at New York Hospital. My son arrived via caesarean section, and he was no doubt as startled as I was, with a great deal more reason. I, like all the other adults in the room, had at least an intellectual understanding that I was having a baby. Roughly nine months before, I had watched a test strip turn blue. In the ensuing months I had nibbled my way through dozens of boxes of saltine crackers, and thrown up in bathrooms all over the city, not to mention one fashionable sidewalk on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I felt my skirts and pants grow tighter, and watched with fascination as my skin stretched and my body morphed into the shape of a large walking pear. I felt from the inside out the pokes and the whacks and the squirming and the shifting of position of something—someone—inside me, and knew that my body was no longer my own but shared by two of us. I knew I was having a baby. And I knew babies cried at their first gasps of this world’s air.

But that cry. It was a trumpet shout shattering the quiet complacency of the night: I am here. I am here. I am here, its corollary seemingly whispered in his pauses for breath: You are a parent. You are a mother. You are mine. This baby, this child, this boy . . . belonged to me—at least for the moment—and in a primordial sense, I belonged to him.

For someone who had long resisted belonging to anyone, this was scary.

Over the next hours, days, and weeks, astonishment turned to wonder which swirled in a turbulent sea of joy, bewilderment, frustration, and extreme fatigue. Out of this whirlpool, I reached for a pen, and began to write. I wrote about what was happening to me—stories of what happened last week, yesterday, today. I wasn’t writing for publication or compensation, although the writing led me to those rewards. I wasn’t even writing to preserve the memories—although now that I can lose so many things that I forget what I’m looking for—I am grateful to have something written down. I wrote only because it felt better to write all these stories down than to let them rattle about in my head. Writing was better than walking around muttering to myself.

These stories are mini-chapters in a simple tale about ordinary things: the musings of one woman trying to muddle through motherhood.

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FROM WALL STREET TO SESAME STREET

Oh, dawn it, a small voice chimes from the middle of the bread aisle. I look up from reading the ingredients on a bag of breadcrumbs—no MSG, BHT, or BHA . . . good—to see my daughter, 33-1/2 inches tall at her last checkup, staring down at a spreading puddle on the floor.

Look what Julia did! her older brother shouts with glee.

"Oh, Julia," I whisper loudly, trying to neither disturb the baby sleeping on the Snugli on my chest, nor alert the lady buying English muffins down the aisle to the little stream winding its way toward her feet. Dropping the breadcrumbs back on the shelf, I race to my daughter, swoop her up and carry her at arms length back to my cart.

Now, sit in here, I command, trying to lower kicking wet Mary Janes into the child seat in the cart.

"NO! I NEED NEW UNDERPANTS!"

My older son becomes concerned. "Eewww, Mommy, she’ll get it all over the food. Don’t get her near the Golden Grahams."

Danny, don’t worry about it. Okay, fine, Julia, walk, I snap under my breath. As curious heads began to turn, I propel the shopping cart around the end of the aisle, away from the scene of the crime.

Once out of sight of the puddle, I turn to make certain that my children are following me. No one is there. "Julia, Danny, I hiss again. Come on." Suddenly they appear from behind the cupcake display, Danny dancing with delight and Julia grinning up at me as she waddles on the outer edges of her feet. In the Snugli, Andrew starts to stretch and make ehh-ehh baby complaints.

"Guys, this is not funny. I haven’t even gotten anything for dinner yet." I scan the area for something absorbent. Suddenly I remember—the meat counter! They have paper towels at the meat counter. Darting past the frozen foods, I yank a handful of towels from the roll, sneak back to the bread, mop up the mess, stop to pick up some baby wipes and head for the check-out line.

I didn’t used to do this. Once upon a time I was a Wall Street lawyer. I dressed in gray flannel suits and hoisted a bulging leather briefcase. I squeezed on the subway every morning and read The Wall Street Journal folded lengthwise. I had a desk in a large sleek office with picture windows overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. I talked of SEC rules and corporate takeovers. I had power lunches and worked late into the nights.

At the law firm I had to account for every fifteen minutes in my day—most of which were expected to add up to billable hours. Knowing that you are billed out at $100 an hour, you can become rather compulsive about productivity and fall prey to some rather self-important ideas about what kind of work is worth your time.

It is snack time at my house, which means it is about ten minutes after the time the kids last ate. Our fourth and final child (we have had three boys and one girl over seven years) is sleeping peacefully, all hunched up in his baby car seat and I’m feeling rather proud of the fact that I remembered to buy grapes—real fruit—as an alternative to the sticky stuff that claims to be fruit something-or-other but was called candy when I was a kid. Grapes are one of the few digestible substances on which my kids and I can actually agree.

I want some. I want some.

Hold on, guys, they’re coming, I say, running the water over the bunch, wondering why they look so . . . so purple. A thought crosses my mind, and I promptly dismiss it. No, I couldn’t have.

Here they are, I say nervously, handing small clumps to outstretched hands.

They grab and devour and suddenly scream, "EWWW! Nuts! They have nuts in them!"

My heart sinks and I know the awful truth. I bought the wrong kind. At home, as in the law, you pay for your mistakes. Before a riot erupts, I grab them all back and begin slicing and digging and extolling the virtues of half grapes with holes. Isn’t this neat, don’t they look like little boats, guys? It takes about thirty minutes of slicing and digging to fix the things. Billed at my hourly rate, theses grapes would be worth roughly $47 per pound.

When my first son was a year old, we moved from Manhattan to the suburbs of Philadelphia. I stopped practicing law to write, teach, and spend more time with my child. With home as my base, I felt as if we had moved to another planet. It wasn’t Philadelphia. It was the house in the suburbs. It was the station wagon. It was the trips to the supermarket. It was changing diapers and doing laundry and making lunch and changing baby clothes and doing laundry again. It was waiting for service and delivery people who would give me only an approximate decade in which they were coming. Most of all, it was my constantly frustrated expectation that I would actually have time or energy to accomplish great things.

I write from home now, and although I can’t quite imagine it, before I had children, I was one of those professional people who believed that women who stayed home with their kids don’t work and consequently have eons of time. These women, I thought, didn’t like the pressures or demands of an office job. Ha. I thought I had worked under pressure as a lawyer. Not until I found myself in a crowded grocery store line with a child yelling POTTY! did I know what pressure was. I thought I had used creativity in the drafting of briefs. Not until unexpected rain forced me and 15 four year olds into my house for a birthday party did I really tap my creative potential. (Face painting is one way to use up trial samples of Clinique.) I thought I knew how to negotiate a deal. Dressing my five year old daughter has taught me how tough a negotiation can be. Woe to the person who asks me now how I like not working or otherwise intimates that I am home watching Oprah.

I cling to my writing and teaching like lifeboats in the storm. And I sometimes long for the days when I had a job where I could complete my sentences and go to the bathroom alone. But I’m getting better at this. Aside from getting through the day, I can make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in super hero shapes, do the voices of Ernie and Bert on Sesame Street (I’m working on Big Bird, but he’s really difficult) and I can sing and act The Wheels on the Bus go ‘Round and ‘Round.

More than that, my expectations about productivity have changed. I’ve discovered that it’s not always how many leaves we rake, but how many colors we can find in the pile. And if I go food shopping with two kids and emerge from the store with none of us in tears, enough food for the next 36 hours and no more than two boxes of sugared cereals, I feel real accomplishment. If while waiting to have a prescription filled at the drugstore, I am able to prevent my three year old from dismantling the contraceptive display, I’m really proud. And if I am able to get a couple of pages written when the kids are with the babysitter at the playground, I am thrilled.

My husband, too, has learned a few things in these seven some years of parenthood. Although he can’t do Big Bird either, he does an excellent Grover. He has also perfected the Mickey Mouse blueberry pancake and can flip it without losing the tail.

Yet sometimes, after spending the week at the office, he experiences reentry problems at home. Amid the Saturday morning chaos of TV and toast, coffee and newspapers, he takes his last sip of juice and pulls out a pen and paper. With one child on his knee and one climbing up his back, he says with great energy and enthusiasm, Okay, let’s make a list of what has to get done today. First, we have to get lunch stuff— He has in mind everything from grocery shopping to rewiring the telephones to landscaping the backyard.

Daddy, you said you would play trains with me, pipes the three year old boy with tousled hair.

You promised we could make a Batman movie, protests the seven year old filmmaker with two new teeth.

Daddy, won’t you play the piano with me, croons the five year old girl with the big brown eyes.

He looks from one child to another before his eyes lock on mine.

Why don’t you take the kids with you to the Super Fresh, I say with a smile. And don’t forget to buy grapes.

LITTLE ONES

WHAT IS A KISS, ANYWAY?

It is 8:53 p.m. and the house is almost quiet. The baby is asleep in his crib. In the room next door, his brother and sister climb into their beds and flop down on the pillows. The little girl and her Cinderella doll hate covers and prefer to sleep with the sheets and blankets bunched at their feet. The older brother loves covers, both to keep warm and as a hiding place for his proton pack and other ghost-trapping equipment he might need during the night. The lights go out, leaving us in the darkness but for the warm glow of the night light on the wall between the beds.

I lean down to push the hair from the little girl’s face and give her a soft good-night kiss. Eyes closed, thumb in motion, she is nearly asleep already. Her brother lies quietly awake, turned toward the bedside table to contemplate and command the row of toy soldiers that stand guard during the night. I smile and lean down to pull up his quilt and kiss him good night. As I draw near, he turns a startled face to me and dives under the covers. The muffled words plead, Don’t KISS ME!

My five-year-old defender of the world from ghosts and goblins and plain old bad guys hates kisses. I am not talking about kisses from the girls at school. I am not even talking about kisses from his sister. I am talking about hello, goodbye, good morning, good night kisses on the hair or cheek from his mother or father.

What is a kiss anyway? A pucker, a smack, a smooch, a soft brushing of two lips. There are passionate kisses and polite kisses, kisses on the mouth and kisses on the cheek, long heartfelt kisses and short peck kisses, luxurious kisses and kisses on the run. There are kisses you anticipate all evening long and those that take you by surprise. But I am not talking about any of these. I am talking about a kiss that goes with a pick-me-up hug or a snuggle around a book—the kind of kiss that is as involuntary as breathing—a parent’s kiss for a child.

Once upon a time, my kisses were magical, with powers far exceeding those of doctors, medicine or bandages. They not only said hello and goodbye; they could heal scraped knees and bruised egos, they could warm cold fingers and dampened spirits. Recently, my kisses are an anathema, to be avoided like ghostly slime, kryptonite and green vegetables. My little half back does an end run around my outstretched arms. I don’t deliberately torment him; if I forget and catch him off guard, he groans and wipes the spot with a fury that would shame Lady MacBeth.

I’m sorry, I forgot, I say as he comes in the door from school. Why do you hate kisses, anyway?

Because, he says, as he pulls his school bag off his back.

Because why? I ask, taking his bag and putting it up on the shelf in the closet.

Because they’re yucky, he sighs, unzippering his black fighter pilot’s jacket.

Why are they yucky? I persist, pulling a sleeve off his arm.

Because they’re WET, he snaps, pulling his other sleeve off and disappearing down the hall, leaving me with an empty fighter pilot’s jacket and the image of Mrs. Down, a babysitter I had as a child. I remember Mrs. Down as old and bent over and at least two hundred years old. When Mrs. Down was leaving at the end of the afternoon, my mother would say, Now give Mrs. Down a hug and a kiss goodbye. Kissing Mrs. Down was pretty awful, but getting her kiss back was even worse. Wet and slobbery. You kiss like a dog, I once told her matter of factly. I didn’t really mean to insult her, but I guess I must have, because she got a kind of funny look in her face and I had to go spend some time in my room.

Anyway, I haven’t thought of Mrs. Down in years and years. And now she’s back, in my body. Whoa. I suck in my stomach, straighten my shoulders and hang up the jacket.

The fighter pilot is finished with his bath and putting on his Superman pajamas. Kneeling in front of him, I throw a hand towel on his wet head and start drying his hair. When it is dry, I look him in the eye and say, Danny, can I have one quick kiss?

No.

Danny, I know that you hate kisses, but isn’t your mom the one person who can give you a kiss now and then?

He studies me as one might look at a slow learner. I hate kisses.

Even from me?

Yes.

I can’t ever kiss you?

He puts his hands on my cheeks and leans toward me until his face is almost touching mine. Unblinking blue eyes peer into my eyes and he whispers softly, Only when I’m bleeding. He steps back and gives me a studied grin.

It is our secret: there is still some magic left.

I WANT TO WEAR A PAWTY DRESS

She was dressed to the hilt, all thirty-three and a half inches of her. She wore a soft green-striped seersucker shift with a starched white bib collar adorned by three large ribbons. On her feet were white ankle socks and black-eyelet patent leathers. In her short brown hair she wore a pink headband with a large white bow on the side. A strand of pink beads and matching clip-on earrings completed her outfit.

Her tall companion did not come close to measuring up to this understated elegance. She wore an old LaCoste shirt with gray Bermuda shorts. On her feet were tattered leather sneakers purchased a year before the little lady was even born.

The smaller person looked up at the taller person. Don’t you want to put on some dressy shoes, Mommy?

There must be some rough justice to this pattern. According to all reports and most photographs, between the ages of two and six, I lived in cowboy boots and a ten-gallon