Every morning when he left before she did — which was most mornings — he kissed her twice.
Not once. Twice. Always twice, on the same cheek, before he said goodbye.
She’d noticed this almost immediately but had never asked about it, in the way you hold certain small things back from examination because you don’t want to disenchant them.
She finally asked on a slow Sunday when there was nowhere to be.
“Why always twice?” Rosa said.
He looked faintly surprised that she’d noticed, then faintly surprised that she’d noticed for this long without saying anything.
“My grandfather did it,” Cian said. “To my grandmother. Every morning when he left. She said it was because once is hello and once is goodbye, and leaving someone you love is both.”
Rosa was quiet for a moment.
“How old were you when he told you that?”
“He didn’t tell me. I just watched them do it.” A pause. “Then after he died, she told me why.”
She reached up and touched his face.
“Once is hello and once is goodbye,” she repeated.
“Because every time you leave someone you love,” he said, “you’re also arriving back toward them. You’re already halfway home the second you walk out the door.”
She pulled him down and kissed him twice, on the same cheek, before she let him go.
Some rituals, she thought, are passed down through watching. Through someone loving someone else so consistently and carefully that a child absorbs it and carries it forward into a life not yet begun.
✦ Today’s Reflection
Is there something about the way you love that you inherited — from watching your parents, your grandparents, someone who showed you what love looked like before you had your own?
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