All I Ever Want To Do Is Kiss You

In the shower this morning, in the sweet release of the hot water on my tired muscles, I think, I need to sing to the baby more. Fetuses can hear through the womb. It’s supposed to be a good idea.

Sing. What song? I’m not a big singer. The country I love on the radio isn’t engraved enough in my brain to call forth spontaneously in any genuine way. One song comes to me, a song I made up – made up the tune, and apparently, when I go back to check my sources, made up some of the words*:

“All I ever want to do is kiss you
The price of kissing you is my life.
Now my loving, is running, toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s take it.”

It’s a piece of a poem by Rumi that I fell in love with when I was a Sufi. I was so high on life, so high on spiritual ecstasy, so high on this song, I used to find the words bursting from my lips over and over, as I took my long walks across Manhattan, a short haired girl with a red paint bindi and baggy jeans, singing to herself on Thirty Ninth street.

Songs are like crumpled napkins, which, sung again, open to reveal stains and scraps of emotions from the last time sung. This song used to be a joyful declaration about my cost of freedom: what a bargain to spend my life for my freedom. Thinking about it now, brought to mind this woman’s dilemma. And, as I soaped my growing belly, it brought to mind the sacrifices we’d be making for our baby. A long-planned for sabbatical for my husband won’t pan out as planned because of her arrival. Some of my career options have been impacted. I worry about the effect of the baby’s arrival on my body. I worry about the effect of the baby’s arrival on my marriage. I worry about the responsibility for raising the baby.

“What a bar- gain, let’s ta- ke it,” I sing to her.

*the original is translated differently depending on the source, but the main error I’ve made is that “the price of kissing you is your life”