See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the ocean kiss the sea.
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?
-Percy B. Shelley
Nora, my youngest (she’s five), was just on my lap. I need to snuggle, she said. Her little body is soft and warm; I don’t mind snuggling at all, though this morning I am feeling antsy, wanting to write. So we snuggled, and talked about Nora things for a while. Eventually I convinced her to go find a toothbrush and toothpaste, and she whined as she went. But I want more snuggling! More and more and more snuggling, trailing out the door. I know what she means.
Here is a picture of my sister Mara Lee with her husband David. I love the tilt of her head, how her hand is curled against his chest. He looks as if he doesn’t mind at all. She said once, “Who wouldn’t want a man who loves Annie’s Song?”. Indeed. Who wouldn’t. I drove for seven and a half hours on Monday to see Mara Lee in Missoula. I am so glad I did; it was a short visit (I drove home again Tuesday afternoon), but it nourished me. I held her babies (oh, yes, I thought as I walked Cora to sleep—I remember babies). We shared great Thai food. I saw Mara Lee’s body talk doctor (Missoula is rich with these kinds of experiences), who laughed as she told me that I had a romantic heart (of course I do). We listened to beautiful music. We talked about sister things. Said goodbye, and I love you. I sang along with my ipod most of the way home (through Dillon, Monida Pass, Idaho Falls, Pocatello).
Yesterday, home again, there was a magnificent thunder and lightning storm, with rain. I was painting a mermaid for Meisha in my studio when the storm hit. There is magic in thunder storms. Or is it unattached, skittering ions, looking for places to climb? Someone to snuggle? Or tickle or tease? I don’t know, but the flashes and cracks and booms that shook the house filled me with…hmm. Wistfulness. Made me want to grab my lover’s hand and dance. Or at least touch… Frank was downstairs on his computer, serious and intent (completely natural–he is between interviews, waiting to hear back on a couple he had last week).
My kids were euphoric when they came in from the rain. Meisha and Ezra were happy and drenched. Michaelyn had been asked on a date (by a boy who turned the lights off in her English class during the thunderstorm, hoping to intensify nature’s drama). Two boys had playfully appealed to Maurya to stand in as their girlfriend, since thunder/lightning/rain storms require the company of a girlfriend, and neither boy had one handy for the occasion. Once, when Frank and I were teenagers, he picked me up and ran with me in the rain. Was it romantic? Maurya asked me. Well, it was fun, I said. And I remembered wanting it to be romantic at the time, because after all, it was raining.
Later, when a visit to my cousin, Merribeth, ended in disappointment (she wasn’t there), Maurya and Meisha and I took impromptu pictures in the slush beside an old dark gray barn just down the street from her house. After which we drove to Costco for bread and cheese and socks, with the windshield wipers swishing (sometimes, I love swishing windshield wipers). We listened to Jack Johnson sing. Maurya told me that she and a boy she likes have agreed to play one of Jack Johnson’s songs together, she on the piano, he on the guitar. This sort of romance runs in the boy’s family. I went to a birthday party for his mother once, where his dad strummed a guitar and serenaded her with “You Are So Beautiful To Me”.
Family Lore: Either my youngest sister Nola, or my niece Chandler–I can’t remember which, has her True Love’s Kiss all planned out. She says she will be in a swing. He (the mystery man) will be pushing her (back and forth, like windshield wipers maybe) and it will be raining, and she’ll lean back, and he’ll lean down (all this leaning), and he’ll kiss her, and it will be beautiful. The cosmos will applaud and the hedgerows break into song. Wow. That’s a lot to have lined up all at once, we tease her. Consider. What if even the smallest detail is off? Like the leaning? She could fall out of the swing in a confused heap, searching for the kiss. He could kiss at the wrong moment, smacking empty air with pursed lips. Or black an eye, break a nose, lose a tooth. And besides, what would the aiming look like, as she’s swinging near and then far again? A prolonged, swaying pucker? What if it’s not even raining? Then no kissing? No Kissing! Yikes. That might drive even the most temperate lover away.
Last night as we drifted off to sleep, Frank buried his nose in my hair and told me I smelled good. I do? I asked. What do I smell like? And he mumbled, oh, like a nice clean Stretch Armstrong right after a bath. I think that was his way of serenading me with “Annie’s Song”.
Today the rain has turned to snow. It would be impossible to safely traverse any route across our half acre; it is all mud and puddles and ponds. Frank had another interview, and turned the position down (it was too far away). Nora put French toast in the microwave for some unknown and preposterous length of time, long enough to turn the bread to charcoal, shatter the plate, and fill the house with the smell of burnt toast. And I… think I will paint something. And snuggle Nora again.
