Hand Kisses

My mother was a working mom, so I went to daycare for as far back as I can remember. I was always in an in-home daycare, and as much as I can remember, I always loved it. The woman who took care of me had a daughter just one year older than I, and we were best friends for a long, long time.

Still, I remember going through a period of time when I was maybe four or five years old, where I would get very sad when my mother dropped me off. I knew that I was going to have fun, but I also knew that I was going to miss my mom. That’s when my mom started the hand kisses. Right before she left, she opened both of my hands, put three kisses into each one, and then closed them up tight. She told me that if I started to feel sad after she left, I could just open my hands and put her kisses on my face and know that she loved me even though she couldn’t be with me.

I remember that for the first few minutes after she’d left, I’d sit quietly somewhere in the house with my hands closed up tight, not wanting to let the kisses get away. But then my friend would come by with a doll or a game, and I would quickly smother my face with the imaginary kisses and then run off to play.

Years later when I was in the first term of my first year of college, I became very, very homesick. I was struggling with my assignments in a way I never had in high school, AND I was 1100 miles away from home trying to deal with it all as best as I could. In tears, I called my mom and begged her to come and get me. I don’t remember what she said to me during that phone call, but I do remember that just two or three days later, my mother sent me a care package. It was full of little treats to cheer me up, but on top of it all was a child-sized handprint card (hinged at the pinky fingers). It had a picture of my mother and me (at about age five) on the front and the inside was full of Xs (kisses, of course). I called my mom to tell her that I had received the package, and she asked if I knew what the card was. I responded that I had known instantly.

I had always thought that these hand kisses were something very special between just my mother and me. So imagine my surprise when I sat down with Tiny and Buba on Sunday morning to hear the new Barnes & Noble online story, The Kissing Hand. In this story, a little raccoon is nervous about going off to school, and his mother places a kiss in his hand. She tells him that if he is feeling lonely, he can place the kiss on his cheek and know that his mother loves him. But what was really, really interesting to me is that the mother tells her son that this ritual is a very old secret- one that she learned from her mother and that her mother learned from hers. I’ll never know for sure how my mother learned to give me hand kisses, but after sharing both The Kissing Hand and my own story with Buba and Tiny we all agreed that The Kissing Hand is a book that we need to have in our collection.

So, I’ll soon be off to pick up a copy for our home, and I would love to send a reanbean reader a copy for your home too. To enter my Kissing Hand giveaway, here’s what you do:

1) Leave me a comment on this post.

2) If you’re a regular reader (and I know who you are), leave me a separate comment telling me that you’re a regular.

3) If you’re a lurker or a first time reanbean reader, leave comments on two other fairly recent posts (anything from June, July, or August will do), and then leave another comment on this post letting me know that you’ve done so.

That’s it. That’s all you need to do for a chance or two to win a copy of The Kissing Hand for your own little one(s). All comments must be posted by midnight (Eastern Standard Time) Sunday, August 14th. I’ll be using random.org to select the winner, and will let you all know who the lucky reader is on Monday, August 15th.