I’m a big believer in the little moments of life. Weddings, graduations, and birthdays make for better photo album entrants, but often it’s the smaller moments that linger in our memories and make a more lasting impression. Where Simon is concerned, I’m expecting memories of our playing tickle kisses to take center stage when I’m old and gray.
Tickle kisses is a game that developed organically; here’s how it works: I sit up on the floor, on Simon’s bed, or the ground at a park. Simon towers over me and knocks me down. In the falling, I grab him, roll with him, and fake pin him under me. Then Simon fights his way out from under me by delivering a salvo of kisses all over my head, accompanied by exaggerated “mum mum mum” kissing noises. Sometimes his lips stray to my neck, which causes a bit of a tickle, if not quite the amount my squeals would indicate.
Simon can do this for 20 minutes or more, and I never cut him short. What could be sweeter than fake wrestling with your child amid giggles, shrieks of joy, hugs, and infinite kisses? Only one thing I can think of, and that’s doing the very same when your child smells of the maple syrup from his lunch-time pancakes and has a visible streak of green in his hair from painting pumpkins over the weekend.
Really, there is no better encapsulation of life with a sweet, not quite four-year-old than this. Nor, for that matter, is there a sweeter feeling in general. I have yet to experience a day so bad that a game of tickle kisses couldn’t redeem it.