A Little Hug Story

"Rose?"

"Hmm?"

"Have you been with a lot of, other... girls? Before me?"

"Two." I sighed. "One was pretty serious."

"And the other?"

"She was curious, but it never went anywhere."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Besides, maybe it was so something better would happen."

Rachael lay quiet for a couple of minutes that asked, "Rose, what does it feel like to fall in love?"

Holy shit!

"Well," I began, trying to think as my mind swam like a drunken sailor through a sea of sex-dorphins. "Well, it's different for each person. It's, um, it's even different for the same person, at different times. With different people--"

"Rose?"

"It's, well, it's hard to--"

"Rosie," she whispered.

I paused. "Yes, Rachael."

"Do you think you might love me?"

Wow, cut to the chase, why don't--

"Yes, Rachael. I think I love you. I think I've loved you for a long time now, since you first hugged me at the end of your senior year."

She lifted her head and looked me in the face.

"And when were you gonna tell me?"

"I don't know. I... I wasn't, sure, if, well, if you could, even, think, of me. In that way."

Her stare lasted long enough for me to label her "inscrutable." Then it lasted long enough for me to become uncomfortable. She scrunched up her nose as she stared at me in a way I've come to know as her "that's lame" look. At last Rachael spoke.

"Huh!"

She nestled her face into my neck again. "Well, I love you. Silly Rosie."

My arms wrapped around my darling Rachael as if she were the most important person in my life. My eyes stung, my heart soared, and my voice cracked.

"I love you, too, Rachael.

"Rosie?"

"Yes, Baby?"

"I'd really like for you to meet my folks."

* * * * * * *

So that's almost the story I told our daughter. I left out all the unbridled sex because, puh-lease, she's much too young. Even if she was eighteen and old enough for any sex talk, who wants to hear about their parents making love? Ugh, that would send most people right into therapy.

But I told her a bit about the stuff a three-and-a-half-year-old girl can hear about, romance and kissing and falling in love. Besides, she has seen the way Rachael and I treat each other. Our relationship has not always been perfect, but it has always, always, been worth it.

So, our daughter knows things in a family are sometimes difficult, sometimes easy, sometimes sad, and sometimes joyful. We role-modeled our relationship based on some old-fashioned values: love, respect, understanding, patience, and honesty.

But at this second, she just wanted to know what it feels like to be in love.

So, I tried to tell her about the feelings I had when Rachael hugged me all those years ago. Again.

She had heard "that old hug story" so many times that she rolled her eyes. Again.

I guess I still cannot explain love too well, but I told our little Cynthia Eileen Mitchell-DeWitt that when it happens for her, she'll know.

"How, Mommy?"

"Well, you'll suddenly feel like you were missing a piece of yourself. And when you look at the person you love it will feel like you've found it."

"It?"

"You know--the missing piece."

"Huh?" Cindy scrunched her nose up the way she does when she thinks my explanations are lame.

Rachael ventured, "Cindy, imagine you're a doughnut."

"'Kay."

"Now when you're a doughnut, you're all cool and sweet," Rachael struck a pose for emphasis with her hands on her hips, elbows out, to look round. "And, like, a totally perfect doughnut, right?"

Cindy nodded. "True, dat. I wanna be choc'lit."

"Cool. Now imagine that you see a doughnut hole for the first time."

"The little round things, right?" She held her fingers up to show the size.

"Right."

"'Kay."

"And you realize that the doughnut hole will fit right here," Rachael tapped her heart, "and make you complete."

"'Kay, complete, like a, cin'min roll?"

"Yeah." Rachael and I both grinned at her.

God, she's so cute!

"So, you want to have that doughnut hole to make you feel like the perfect chocolate doughnut/cinnamon roll thingy--"

"Cin'min, choc'lit, just like Gampa's pancakes?"

"Yes! Now, you never missed the doughnut hole before 'cause you didn't know it belonged here." Rachael tapped her chest again. "But once you saw it you knew there was a part of you that was missing all along."

"Oooh."

"And what's even better is the doughnut hole feels exactly the same about you!"

"It's like that?" Cindy's voice hushed in a thoughtful, skeptical reverence.

"Sort of. Except it can feel kinda like falling. That's why people call it--"

"'Falling in love', right?" Cindy had Rachael's eyes, and right now they glistened with understanding. It was the same expression she would sometimes get when we'd travel around the country and visit places Rachael experienced that summer long ago. Each time I saw Cindy with that knowing look it felt like Cupid's arrow in my heart.

"Right!"

"'Kay. cool." She nodded, her dark curls bobbing, and announced, "I'll be in my room. Call me when Gammy and Gampa get here, 'kay?"

"All right," I told her.

"'Bye, Mommies."

"'Bye, Baby," I cooed.

"'Bye, Honey," Rachael called at the same instant.

We turned to one another, smiling.

"I loved your explanation. I don't know why that question is still so difficult for me to explain."

"Maybe you're just not good at explanations, Teach," she teased.

"Yuh-huh. Thanks." I stuck my tongue at her then said, "But you know you dodged a serious bullet, right?"

"Whaaat?"

Mischief curled my lips into a smirk as I asked, "What would you have said if she asked which one of us is the 'doughnut'... and which one is the 'hole'?"

Rachael guffawed. "Whew, you're right. That was a close one."

"You better work on your answer. You know she'll ask."

"Yeah, damn. She's so smart, and she doesn't forget anything."

Rachael's smile grew more lovely every day--especially when she talked about our daughter! I gazed deep into those dark brown eyes framed by her sexy new glasses.

"I totally feel it. Right here," I murmured, patting my chest. In all our time together, the bad "it" had never returned. The insecurity and doubt and panic that threatened to drown me in my classroom that fateful day had never returned. With Rachael the only "its" I had known were love and fulfillment, and I told her.

"I love you."

"I love you, too, Rosie. You just wait till the Princess is over at the folks' tonight." She winked her promise to me. "You're really going to feel 'it' then."

"Oh, goody!"

"And I have some new silk scarves." The corners of her lips arched, her cheeks colored, and she asked, "Any ideas about how we can use them?"

"Hmm, I could come up with something."

Rachael still maintained her ability to excite me. I felt myself growing warmer and, well, "throbbier" just thinking about making love with her.

"Yeah, so, what do you think, Honey? You want to be the doughnut, or--"

"Maybe a little of each," I replied. My salacious grin told Rachael I could hardly wait.