Twice recently, I have received a bag or a box of memorabilia, mostly related to my father. It has been wonderful either seeing pictures that I have never seen before or reliving old memories.
But it has also made me sad. When my mom remarried and sold the house in which my sister and I grew up, I was in the midst of a depression. We were cleaning out our childhood rooms and going through 25 years of accumulated detritus. Since I was depressed, I had no sense of sentimentality, at all. I threw away most of the keepsakes of my youth — pictures, yearbooks, awards. I wish that I had kept all that stuff.
One thing that I DID keep was a poem. It was written by Jim Maloney. We went to school together from elementary school through high school graduation.
Jim may have written this to be satirical (I was often the butt of teasing because of my goody-two-shoes mentality, but my mother had me convinced that anything beyond chaste kissing would result in the total ruin of the rest of my life — no job, no husband, no family, no income — life in the street, living for handouts), but I have hung on to it, choosing instead to think of it as my own personal ode.
Jim–I thank you. This poem brings a smile to my face, 25 years later.
Have Those Lips Been Kissed
my mama always said 