Paper Kisses

The circle of hunters looked down upon the boxes of treasures with mixed emotions. For some the boxes represented nothing more than junk that should be discarded, either to a charity or to a dumpster. A few saw the boxes as potential financial gain, should something rare be found inside of them. But for the matriarch, these boxes contained priceless treasures; complete with stories, memories, and hopes she or her ancestors had once held.

The first box was opened and the contents poured out. What appeared to be a few random dishes, some silk napkins, and tarnished locket with a foreign scribbling on it, lay exposed to the eyes of the multigenerational group. The youngest hunter reached for the locket and smiled.

"It's pretty, Mama, will it open?" Her mother looked over towards the matriarch who nodded her assent with a hint of smile. Carefully she opened the locket to find two black and white photos, one of a startling beauty and the other of a striking young man in uniform. "Who is it?" the young hunter inquired.

"That was Thomas, my first husband." The mothers of the young hunters looked up startled.

"You were married to someone else before you were married to Pop? Does Pop know about this?" The matriarch smiled sadly, and with a nod began to explain how Pop and Thomas were best friends in high school. She had fallen madly in love with Thomas and when the war came, married him in a private ceremony in her parents' living room and had spent a short honeymoon with him over in Ft. Worth before he had to leave for boot camp. She spoke of their last kiss at the bus station and how the warmth of his lips seemed to linger for hours after he climbed onto that bus. Thomas loved the army and became a Ranger, fought in several different campaigns during the Korean War and had made good progress in his rank.

"The picture you see was the one he sent me after he graduated from boot camp and was about to be shipped off. I put it in the locket next to mine so that the two of us could be together, at least in spirit. Every night I would kiss the picture of him inside, close the locket and kiss the outside of it while I prayed for him to come home to me safely. Your Aunt Jolene called them my paper kisses and would tell me to stop before I kissed his image right off the paper."

"I can't tell you the joy I felt when a letter from Thomas told me he was being shipped home and would be back here in four weeks. When he called me from San Diego and said he was catching a bus home, I cried with happiness and started to plan a big welcome home party for him. There was going to be a cake, some finger sandwiches, punch, and your Pop had even come up with a band so we could all dance." The matriarch sniffled, wiped a small tear that had mysteriously appeared in the corner of her eye.

"I'll never forget when that phone rang and the voice on the other end started telling me how sorry they were because they had to tell me some bad news. My Thomas had been killed at a bus stop when some man tried to take his wallet. They struggled and the man had a knife and stabbed him. I never got to tell him a last goodbye and never got to kiss him again. The last kiss I shared with Thomas was another paper kiss as I closed that locket forever and put it into the box. Your Pop sure was a good friend in those days. He took care of the funeral arrangements, made sure I was taken care of, and afterwards when folks sort of forget about you, kept coming over to check on things. He fixed things around the house, worked on my old junker of a car, and made sure I was okay. One day he asked me if I would go on a picnic with him and promised it was nothing more than a friend taking a friend out to get her away from the house and the memories."

"We went over to the park where we sat by the pond and watched ducks herd their ducklings into the water and laughed at all the fuss they would make over their younguns. It was such a nice picnic and when we were ready to go, your Pop looked at me and said he missed Thomas and had never had a better friend. He was glad I was letting him fix things around the house but knew the one thing he could never fix was my broken heart. He sure wanted to though but knew it would be improper to ask me to even consider such a thing. I looked at him and asked him if he was asking me to marry him and he shrugged and said maybe he was doing just that but didn't want me to feel obligated to answer."

"Well I thought about it for a long time and over the next few weeks he courted me and I finally took him up on his offer. We were married in the little Baptist church over at Sulpher Springs and took up housekeeping. Wasn't long and you girls arrived and life moved on. I can't say there aren't times I stop and think about Thomas but I can say this, your Pop was wrong. He can fix anything, including a broken heart." The matriarch reached over and took the locket from the young hunter's hands, kissed the picture, closed it, and kissed the outside of the locket.

The second to youngest hunter reached out to touch the locket and asked, "Can I have the locket? I will keep it safe and treat it like the treasure it is." Her mother started to rebuff the child's impertinence when the matriarch smiled and placed the locket in her hand.

"Maybe one day you will have a young man whose picture will fit nicely in this locket. I just hope you never have to know the emptiness of a paper kiss, sugar."

The hunters continued to dig through the boxes of treasures, listening to stories told about each item and when the hunt was completed, the boxes sorted and stacked, it was for certain that these hunters had been successful in their acquisitions of priceless treasures, leaving the storeroom much wealthier than when they had entered.