The Kiss

I'm in a Memory-Lane kinda mood....
We had a small wedding, and there were a mind-numbing number of details. I spent the better part of six months making sure it would all go off flawlessly. I was stressed-out and jumpy, and I was a control freak to such a degree that it's remarkable Andy still married me.

On my list of Wedding Details That Needed To Be Managed was "the kiss". The you-may-kiss-the-bride kiss. I suggested to Andy that we should rehearse it. We had plenty of kissing experience, goodness knows, but that was a very important kiss. What if we clocked each other in the nose in front of all the people? What if, out of nervousness, the kiss was passionless and dull? What if I started laughing?

Andy had the nerve to say no. We wouldn't rehearse. We'd kiss plenty, and every now and then I'd say, "so, will it be like that?" But he would just smile and shrug, much to my dismay, and my pleas fell on deaf ears. I started to worry he had some lovey-dovey mischief up his sleeve, and I reminded him that my family would be sitting in the first row.

Still, he just grinned. "It'll be a good kiss," he promised. Even then, that man knew how to mess with me.

On our wedding day, things were perfect. Despite my preoccupation with the details, I managed to stay quite focused during the ceremony. I wasn't nervous at all. Until our pastor said, "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

I had exactly .7 seconds to think half a nervous thought.

Because then he kissed me.

That kiss, my friends, was The Kiss To End All Kisses. While the specific details of it are meant for my memories only, I'll tell you that I didn't just feel that kiss on my lips. I felt it inside my brain, the very brain that had tried (unsuccessfully) to talk me out of falling in love with this man so quickly. I felt it inside the belly that would someday carry our three babies. It traveled all the way down to my feet, the feet that would happily follow him everywhere and in between.

It was a good kiss.

And thankfully, Andy didn't pack that kiss away with the box of wedding keepsakes that sit in my attic. Every now and then, it reappears. He'll walk in the door from work, usually on a day when my hair is greasy and the kids are fighting and dinner is burned and he'll plant that same kiss right back on me. My knees go just as weak as they did 13 years ago.

It's still a good kiss!