“Once upon a time they healed scraped knees and bruised egos. Now they’re avoided like kryptonite and green vegetables.” That is an extract from the short story “I Hate Kisses” by Susan Lewis. The story is in the book “What is a kiss, anyway?” by the same author, which “is a collection of humorous and poignant stories about one woman’s attempt to make sense of family life” (source: Amazon). The sentence above is the woman’s reflection on kisses, when she witnesses her 5-year-old son avoids his dearest mother’s good-night kiss. The title “I Hate Kisses” is also an adorable innocent confession of the son when receiving a kiss from his mother. This story is a precious experience for parents to understand their children.
The story takes place on an ordinary day, a mother of three little children, gives good-night kisses to them. But when she is going to kiss the older brother, he startles, eludes from her arm and pleads not to kiss him. She starts wondering the meaning of a kiss. She thinks that kissing is nothing very serious, that it is merely a way to express affection toward each other. Especially, in her son’s case, her kisses use to mend his wounded soul and bring with themselves a great sense of encouragement. So curiously, she asks her son the reason for kiss dislike. When he answers ‘because they are yucky’, she again reflects on her experience of kissing and being kissed by the baby-sitter – Mrs. Down and find kisses ‘yucky’ indeed. However, when she then desperately pleads the son for another way to utter lovingness to her, she was taken aback by his tender manner. And when her son says that she can kiss him only when he is bleeding, she is heartened and she believes that her son still needs her kiss and ‘there is still some magic in it’.
The position of the writer – first point of view is a mother wanting to give her son a kiss. She loves her son so much and perceives that kissing is the only way for her young son to express the love to her. She also...