Does a Kiss Change Anything?

Sure, I was the kid with the winning smile, the young heart who talked too quickly and too loudly of the love he owned and wished to give away. Religion changed that. When I was twelve, Mrs. Braebrooke told me that Jesus found life difficult because he believed in honesty and faithfulness and that having a generous spirit led him to be abused, scoffed at for His gentleness. So, I and my winning smile thought it was time to find another way.

At twelve, all a young man’s dreams were before me. Youth is always impatient, always in a hurry, when sowing the seed of manhood. Never free from the hauntings of my foolish choices, even when far away. I thought I would change.

So, for all summers I had yet to find, the sunny days yet to be spent, winter never gave them back. It was only the coming of spring and another chance. Lifetimes can be lived in a single summer or loafed away searching a world of dark rooms, those in broken down hotels, hoping that such places would present me with something as significant as love. But no, summer’s momentary flashes of self-absorbed gratification.

But there was a time, in the fall of the year when the sun’s bright yellow mingled with the fog over the harbor, and Tobermory was my whole world, and it was there she came. I chased her nakedness down Fidden Beach after an entire day looking in her direction, and the six months of love that followed was worth a lifetime of looking. Breakfast oysters and marmalade, and knowing she tried to love me was never enough because love seemed no less inevitable than the sound of a bell tied about the throat of a cat, now here, now sounding far off.

The paths I walked were familiar. They twist, bend, dip and rise alongside the ocean. Such ways became tortured, looking down on has become blond Scandinavian sands, the curves, dips, and risings follow the turns and beauty of a woman, mother, and lover looking for her child.

I’ll never leave the shoreline, regardless of which country I make my home. On the Isle of Mull, the sun is no more dependable than the direction of the wind. Intrepid hikers' cross fields, climb crags, coming home at the tail ends of the afternoons, having set off blindly sometime around the midmorning’s tide. The seals come close, but the hills keep their distance. A new summer arrives. Winter’s promise to forget the past, broken.

I can’t live without kisses.

It is a weakness of my nature that asks: if only I could live my life over. Whenever I tell myself such a thing, I hear God asking to give me a good hard kicking. Finding so many compensations, having been kissed soft, kissed hard, kissed well, kissed hello, and kissed goodbye, my life has been one filled with Don Quixote adventures. I’ve taken what chances came, lost, won, or too scared to go. I’ve had philosophy banged into me, insanity placed upon me, misfortune buries me, and every time, every single time, a kiss repaired the damage.

Kisses stood me up straight.

But every day between the ages of ten and forty, I was never meant to love Beethoven’s music, appreciate the portraits of Velasquez, or understand the nature of good wine. So, as the summers came they softened me, I listened to Beethoven, own a book of Velasquez’s portraits, and enjoy the warmth of excellent wine.

After I have done all this, lived all the mistakes, hurt those I loved most, paid my dues in tears, and danced a jig of a life so beautiful, so remarkable, I can now, finally, come to this place, and what falls upon me is the pleasure of a deliberate evening.

I no longer feel the need to charge through the trees or the hedgerows of life, crashing on toward one wave after another. The destiny of this man was fulfilled.

Winter now throws up only what is best about life; it forgets the moody, sultry, jealous summers, offering the exacting nature of long cold days and celebrates only the good-hearted, the honest, and the downright good-natured.

I know that love is dressing and undressing, the winter and summer, and in both, she places her lips on mine.

Love is all; I remind myself. And so it is…and so it is.