Alex and I kiss every morning and evening, barring distance or sickness. The girls are part of this ritual, just like our parents, and why not throw Holly in there, too.

It doesn’t matter how much of a rush I’m in, how poorly I’ve slept, or how angry I might be, every day and night begins and ends with a kiss.

If you asked me why those kisses are so important to us after 22 years of marriage, I would stammer because I hadn’t given it much thought lately.

So it’s a good thing I’m going back to the beginning. I had just met Alex on the plane a week ago (check out last week’s blog if you’re not in the know). Once we landed, we had a lot of ground to cover.

To backtrack, before Alex got off the plane, I had given him my numbers, but Alex insists that I gave him three: work, home, and my car cell. (A clunker of a phone that I plugged into my lighter and used for emergencies. Meeting Alex must have been one such emergency).

Before Alex, I had my share of crushes that I admired from afar and boyfriends that didn’t mean that much to me. I didn’t want to get hurt, so I kept guys at arms distance, like a receiving line.

Remind me to tell you the male magnet story someday if you never heard it already, so I don’t get sidetracked.

But the image of the receiving line sums up my dating career. I had a slew of guys that didn’t interest me lined up to talk to me, and the ones that I typically liked were nowhere.

After meeting Alex, my low estimation of guys and dating had changed. I went to work that Monday morning and glowed. (Or at least that’s what my friends said).

And I patiently glowed until Wednesday. That was the day I had appointed for no reason except my own as the day he would call.

That day came and went. He didn’t call me at work, so I rushed home so I’d casually be waiting when the phone rang. (Thank goodness he didn’t call me on my cell because I never even used that thing).

No call. I hadn’t thought of that possibility. What now? My roommate tried to calm me down.

And then at the latest possible hour, without being rude, it was 9:30 pm; FINALLY, when I had completely lost my cool and was hanging on by a thread, the phone rang.

I had plans that weekend, so somehow we set our “first date,” not that we were calling it that in all due respects to his girlfriend, for the following night.

My oldest doesn’t like this story because it’s unfair to the girlfriend. And in all fairness, my daughter’s read a lot of books (340 in the past two years), and she knows an antagonist when she sees one. Ahem. That would be me, but before I go and explain myself…

We planned to go to a little Italian place called Baci with murals painted on the walls and a few tables jetting out onto the sidewalk. It was around the corner from my Upper West Side apartment.

I had no idea that baci translated to mean a kiss, the only foreign language I learned was French, anyway.

Alex picked me up at work. Big mistake. I had sensationalized our plane story so much that by the time Alex showed up, even the guys were waiting in the reception area to check him out.

Little did I know that my dear friend, who worked in the tape room, had hooked up the tape machine to the security camera to record Alex’s entry. (We put it in a montage of our wedding video for posterity).

Once we got past all the stares, it gave us hours to stroll, wait, take the subway, walk to the restaurant, sit down, talk, and order appetizers. Only we forgot to order the rest of the meal.

We sat in a NYC restaurant for one and a half hours, and the waitress left us alone.

We were engaged in conversation with an older woman who was sitting next to us. We told her all about meeting on the plane. She said, “This is love at first sight. The same thing happened to my husband and me.” And so we talked and talked about love at first sight.

I needed to seal in the moment. It felt so surreal like I had never gotten off that plane and had dreamed it all up. It’s not like I believed in love at first sight. Something like that happened in the movies, not to me.

I excused myself. On the way to the bathroom, I saw a payphone. I picked it up and made a collect call to my Mom.

And this is where my journal entry picks up. It was dated July 31, 1997.

“Dear God, I just came back from my first date with Alex Ortiz, and I called my Mom from Baci–on a payphone–to say that “I will either marry this guy or he’ll break my heart.”

Mom being the smart southern girl that she is, asked, “Where is he?”

“He’s talking to this woman that we just met,” I said, not bothering to explain that she wasn’t my competition.

And Mom said, “What are you talking to me then? Have I raised an idiot! Get off the phone and go back and start talking to him.”

So that was me trying to capture that scene like it was a firefly that I could put in a bottle. The all-powerful moment of knowing that this was the guy I was supposed to marry stirred my feelings and mixed with the desire to know “Alex Ortiz” forever.

It was too elusive, so that night, I tried to capture it in my journal instead.

“I’ve never had such an intense reaction with anyone that I have ever first met. And yet I don’t want to write this because it sounds so corny. And here I find myself writing to cool down the intense magic that I feel with him.”

I have to warn you I feel more like a voyeur peering into someone else’s innermost thoughts than I do the person who composed this.

Maybe a part of me is wondering like my daughter, “But what about the girlfriend?” While another part is rooting for me (especially since I know how things turned out).

“He’s everything I remember him to be and more. Oh, dear God, it almost seems to be the biggest miracle I’d ever witnessed. He is my wish.”

And, as every wish must come to an end, so Alex walked me home. We must have held hands because I wrote how I was afraid to hold his hand too long. I’d have to let go because of the butterflies in my stomach.

The guy who’d “watch over my car and make sure nothing happened to it” was most likely idling about as I pulled out my keys to the front entrance to our building and unlocked the door. I entered the code and opened the second door.

We passed the mailboxes and the mirrors where our reflections went on forever.

We took the elevator together and stood almost as close as we sat on that plane. We walked down the narrow hallway, and we landed outside my door—time to say goodnight.

There’d be plenty more good night kisses, time for us to grow together, but somehow I didn’t need to tell my younger self that. Somehow I already knew. There was my journal.

“I don’t know what this is, but it’s powerful. I feel the two of us could do just about anything.”

And with that knowledge came a great feeling. I had forgotten what I felt standing in the hallway that July 31st of long ago.

“I want to carry that feeling I had in the hall, saying goodnight, being completely sober, and feeling intoxicated. I was drunk enough to want to stay in his arms forever and to kiss him. Oh, but to feel that tingle as his lips sweetly brushed against mine.”

There was something magical about that first kiss–so simple, yet so profound. We were sealing in all that would come to pass over 23 years.

And, yes, there was a girlfriend. God knew that, but He wanted Alex and me to be together anyway. The difference between the rules of dating (don’t steal someone’s boyfriend) and the institution of marriage (thank goodness they weren’t married). It’s too complicated for a teenager.

It would be too hard for me to understand if I didn’t have my 27-year-old self tugging at me. Remember, love at first sight, when you knew and felt your relationship was a granted wish, a blessing, a miracle even.

Sometimes life happens, and we go through the work of it; we forget.

But how fun that I knew something back then that had escaped me now. I’d lost touch with the feeling behind meeting Alex and knowing he was the one and kissing him for the first time.

Next time Alex and I peck each other on the lips to greet each other or say goodnight, thanks to my younger self; I’ll be in touch with so much more…the very life force that seals our love with a kiss.