Today is National Kissing Day.
A friend once told me the minute a man touches you—you can tell if it’s for his benefit or yours. That’s pretty spot on. Ever had a guy hang on to a friendly hug just a little too long? That’s for his benefit…unless you’re crying your eyes out because your dog died or you got a bad haircut…then it’s probably for your benefit.
That got me to thinking the same thing might hold true for saying ‘I love you’ from habit and not sentiment.
When I was younger, my standard goodbye to my husband was, ‘love you, want you, need you.’ I meant it even though I didn’t say it with feeling. Because sometimes, you really feel the love when you say it, and other times you say it because it’s just the natural thing to say.
My husband told me he has no recollection of his mother ever saying she loved him. That doesn’t mean she didn’t. It just means saying those words might have made her uncomfortable. Or, maybe she felt she showed how much she loved him because of all she did and saying the words weren’t that important. As a writer, we’re drilled with “show don’t tell” so I suppose that can hold true with expressing our feelings too.
Some mothers are touchy-feely-smoochy-smoochy like mine was and some mothers aren’t. They’re both good mothers, just different.
Up until my parents died, we hugged and kissed hello and goodbye, even if I saw them more than once a day. I don’t know if Daddy was affectionate before he married Momma, but if not, her personality must have rubbed off on him, because Daddy was a hugger and a smoocher.
I looked up the word smoocher and the definition said it is a slobbery kiss. That doesn’t really describe what I mean. Our kisses were more like pecks, but describing Daddy as a hugger and pecker just didn’t seem right.
Most people in my clan are affectionate. Not so much on my husband’s side. One of his brothers would stiffen like he had a steel rod in his spine if you hugged him. I did it anyway. Because I inherited that TFSS gene and couldn’t help myself.
Over the years, I’ve had lots of people in my life I loved, but never told them because it would probably have been considered weird or inappropriate. That’s too bad because maybe they needed to hear it, and it would have been as much for their benefit as mine.
When I was in my 20s, I worked in a drug store with a soda fountain. Every day, a group of old men came in to drink coffee. I loved each one of them. That summer, I went on vacation and while I was gone, one of them died. When my boss told me, I cried and said, “I never told him I loved him.”
To which my boss replied, “Don’t worry. He knew.”
I hoped he was right, but I regretted it all the same.
In these times of social distancing, maybe we can’t be Touchy-Feely-Smoochy-Smoochy, but we can take every opportunity to say I love you, regardless if it’s for your benefit or theirs.
