
My four year-old just told me that her very liberal, uber-crunchy, 100% woo-woo Waldorf kindergarten has a rule -- no kissing in school. She’s heartbroken. Siena LOVES to kiss. She kisses everyone -- and makes their day. We lip kiss, cheek kiss, butterfly kiss, Eskimo kiss -- you name it. She loves kissing so much that last year, when we went to a benefit concert where 100 people were sitting in chairs in neat little rows, she started at the back, climbing on the laps of each person to give them a kiss and a hug, before crawling onto the next chair and kissing and hugging the next person. After they were kissed and hugged by my magical child, people wept. I mean seriously wept. While I watched her, open-mouthed, she finished hugging and kissing the whole audience, and I told her it was time to go. It was past her bedtime. She looked at me with wide eyes and said, “No Mama. They need more.” And she went to the back and started all over again.

The other night, my wife and I were cleaning up after dinner. And after all the dishes were put up in the washer, the leftovers put away into the refrigerator, counters wiped down, we just stood there in the middle of our kitchen and hugged each other. We held that hug for several minutes. And afterwards, she said, “I need more of that.”