We’ve all had to adapt and change the way we live our lives, but it hasn’t been all bad. Admit it, some of the things we’ve stopped doing weren’t so great to begin with.
I’m happy not to be crammed cheek to jowl with strangers on public transportation, or having someone stand so close to me at the deli counter that I can tell they’ve already eaten enough Genoa salami for today, thank you very much.
Speaking for myself, I’ve gotten kind of used to this new way of social distancing. How pleasant it is not getting butt-bumped by the cart of the person behind me at the IGA checkout counter. I sure don’t miss that.
What I do miss, though, is kissing.
If you are, like me, a kisser, your first inclination in any social setting with people you’ve met at least twice, is to lunge for the smooch, or touch cheeks, or pretend to. But under the new rules, we can’t do that anymore!
It runs in the family
This business of not kissing is extremely difficult for someone like me because I grew up in a family where kissing was de rigueur. We kissed good morning and good night and when going and coming. If my mom was running to the store, she’d kiss us goodbye, then again when she came back. If I was going outside to play, I’d kiss her before heading out the door.
A trip to the bathroom did not require a kiss. Unless of course you were disappearing for an extended stay.
Everyone in my family kissed — parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the milkman (kidding on that last one!!) — so I just assumed that all the kissing was normal and I never gave it a thought until my future husband commented on it after he picked me up for our first date.
That was when he met my parents, my grandmother, and my four younger sisters. Once introductions were out of the way, we engaged in awkward small talk for a few minutes until it was okay for us to leave.
But before we did, I went around the room, kissing each person goodbye. He just stood there watching our family ritual, then backed his way out of the living room, smiling and waving, but not joining in on the kissing.
At least not that time.
No, not kissing, ever
As years passed and each of my younger sisters added husbands and kids to the family stew, nothing changed about our kissing routine, except for the number of people involved. And it didn’t matter if you were in a snit with a particular relative, you still kissed.
It’s okay to not speak with someone, for years even. But it is never okay to not kiss.
When I think about missing kissing, I remember one particular visit to Ohio. By then there were 22 of us gathered at my sister’s house for a last supper, after which my husband and I were going to head back to New York.
When it came time to leave, we both started our goodbyes, each punctuated with a kiss. The entire process took about 40 minutes. Then family members followed us to the door and stood waving until we turned the corner and were out of sight.
After those kisses and goodbyes, I always cried a little.
We were coming to the entrance of the Ohio turnpike when I realized I had left my purse hooked on the back of a chair in my sister’s kitchen. “Have her mail it to you,” my husband suggested, “what’s in it that’s so important anyhow?”
“Nothing, really,” I said. “Just birth control pills.”
Back in front of my sister’s house, he stayed in the car. Silly man.
He thought that by remaining outside he’d be granted dispensation from another round of goodbye kisses. But it doesn’t work that way in kissing families. There are no exemptions. Ever.
When I walked back to the car, they all came with me and we moved in unison, in a tight familial hug, just a blur of feet across the lawn. He met us on the sidewalk and 40 minutes later, after being appropriately re-kissed, we began our trip back to New York, for real. This time with my purse. And again, I cried a little.
S.W.A.K.
A former Associate Editor of the Shelter Island Reporter, Joanne Sherman has won multiple awards for her humor columns in both the Suffolk Times and the Reporter. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, and other publications. She wrote a column, “Can We Talk”, in Toastmaster, a magazine for Toastmasters International, and was an award-winning humorist/commentator for WPBX radio in Southampton. She and her husband, Hoot Sherman, live on Shelter Island.
