In One Year and Out the Other -- Out now from Pocket Kick off the New Year in high style with a Midnight Kiss I first suspected that my midnight kiss on New Year’s Eve possessed prophetical powers the year I went out with Brad Layton. I had lusted after Brad in my heart (and other body parts) for several months. He was easily the blondest boy I had ever seen. From three rows behind in Intro to Psychology, I could see the fluorescent lights glinting off his shining locks. Outside, his head became a blinding beacon in the Arizona sunshine. His shoulders were broad. His eyes were blue. Even with his unfortunate tendency to occasionally call me “dude,” I found him irresistible. I couldn’t figure out why his girlfriends kept dumping him. Then he kissed me at midnight on New Year’s Eve. It was, without a doubt, the most slobbery, vile disgusting kiss I have ever received. He was like a human water fountain. I was wet down past my chin. My velvet top was half-soaked and had to be dry-cleaned. Then that spring, Phoenix experienced a bizarre and anomalous El Nino year. We were beset by torrential rains and flash floods. That’s what got me thinking. Was there a connection between the kiss I received at midnight and what the following year might bring? As I looked back through my life, I found plenty of other examples including, but not limited to: The year I kissed Doreen O’Farrell’s ex-boyfriend at midnight just to (and I quote) “burn her butt” and she developed a hemorrhoid less than a month later. the year that my midnight kiss was an awkward affair of clinked teeth and bumped noses, and I ended up breaking my leg, needing stitches, and having two car accidents over the next twelve months. The year that John Peterson kissed me in the dark of his parents’ basement with all the sweetness any fifteen-year-old boy could muster, and I ended up getting three cavities. Gives you a touch of the heebie-jeebies, doesn’t it? It’s enough to make you stay home on what my alcoholic friends refer to as Amateur Night, isn’t it? Yet here I was, driving down Carefree Highway along the northern edge of Phoenix and Scottsdale to my friend Amanda’s new Suburban Wonder Home, on my way to a party, and crossing my fingers that I’d meet someone fabulous to kiss at midnight. I didn’t expect it to be like the movies, with fireworks bursting over our heads as the handsome leading man took me in his strong arms and pressed his lips to mind. I just wanted it to mean something. I wanted it to be special. I wanted there to be a distinct absence of drool. Read Reviews | Read Excerpt BUY: Amazon

"My favorite story is "Midnight Kiss" by Eileen Rendahl... Rendahl infuses laugh-out-loud humor into a touching exploration of the true meaning of friendship and love..."
- Curledup.com

CHAPTER ONE

Prologue

There’s a home movie I just love of my two sisters and me with our dad. I’m maybe three or so. There I am, Baby Emily, with that ridiculous pixie cut that my mother was so fond of. I have on a little checked pinafore with little matching bloomers. Honestly, I look precious, although it was my mother’s insistence that I wear this kind of outfit that would mark me as a complete loser by the fourth grade.

Anyway, if I was three, Claudia would have been about five. Her hair is pulled back in glossy black pigtails so tight that she almost looks Asian. Leah would have been close to seven. Her hair is in one long reddish-brown braid straight down her back. The braid is so thick that it must have weighed a ton. It’s nearly as thick as her skinny little arms that stick out of her starched white blouse, the one with the little blue-and-pink flowers embroidered on the collar.

Many of my memories seem tied inextricably to the length of our hair and hemlines. A particular hairstyle or a particular blouse can slam me back in time like a door banging open in my head. Some people say that the sense of smell is the most evocative. For me, it’s the length of my bangs and the height of my heels.

All three of us are a little obsessed with our hair. At least it’s something we can all agree on.

I actually have a vague memory of the day the movie was taken. Maybe it’s the pixie cut, but more likely those damn bloomers. They had elastic at the legs so tight it threatened to cut off my circulation. I’d still have red rings around my thighs the day after I wore them. It was one of those rare sunny warm summer days that nobody things Seattle ever has. We were all so happy that my parents had taken out the movie camera, even though it wasn’t anyone’s birthday.

In the movie, we’re all hopping around Daddy. He looks young and strong. His hair is still dark and he still has most of it, too. He’s wearing a plain white T0shirt and khaki pants. His belt has already started its upward creep, but you wouldn’t even notice it if you didn’t know how high it would go in later years. One at a time, he’s picking us up and swinging us through the air.

I remember the sensation of flying. I remember the thrill of leaving the ground in the completely safe haven of my father’s arms. I remember the pure joy of being loved.

I remember how hard it was to wait my turn, to let Leah and Claudia have chances to soar. I remember begging to be lifted.

In the film you can see our mouths moving, but home movies back then didn’t have any sound. I know what we were saying, though. We were each begging for our turn.

We were chanting over and over again:

Do me! Do me next, Daddy! Daddy, Daddy, do me!

Now that we’re adults, my sister Claudia has developed a way of describing even things that aren’t funny that makes you laugh. If you could hear her tell about trying to get to the hospital in time to have her second child while her husband was going through heroine withdrawal, you’d understand what I’m talking about. I’ve heard that story at least a dozen times over the years, but it still makes me laugh so hard that I’m practically screaming.

Sometimes I try to get her to tell me about my own life, so I ca laugh about it instead of crying.

It took me close to a year to figure out exactly how heartbroken I actually was. Until then, I’d reasoned that I’d done most of my mourning before my husband died. Watching him lose his hair, the ability to drive, to read, to speak, and eventually to even move, was a series of little deaths on the way to the Big Kahuna, and I mourned each loss as it happened. So I thought that was why I felt as little as I did. I’d cried so much before that, there weren’t really any tears left.

I was wrong.

People talk about denial like it’s such a bad thing. You hear it all the time. “Oh, he’s just in denial.” They all nod their head wisely with knowing looks on their faces. I personally like denial a lot. It can get you through a lot of pretty bad days.

Unfortunately, like any good thing, denial has to come to an end. That happened on the first anniversary of my husband’s death, which – far from coincidentally – would also have been our ninth wedding anniversary.

So after two years of keeping a stiff upper lip (I held up really well during the year he was sick, you can ask anyone. That little episode in the Walgreens pharmacy could have happened to anyone), I pretty much fell apart. Without my sisters, I’m not sure my daughter and I would have come through the other side. They made food and made me eat it, too, drove car pool in my place, forced me to get out of bed and take showers, vacuumed my house. They stood watch and held me when I cried, and eventually Abby and I did make it through. Not unscathed, mind you. Even the highest-quality sister love can’t do that, but we’re here and we’re functioning. So are my sisters.

We’re still all over one another. Claudia says that we’re overly enmeshed, but we like it like that. Rarely a day goes by that one of us doesn’t end up at another one’s house, but we religiously do one another’s hair at least once a month. We can’t go much longer than that because my sisters’ gray hairs start to show. We gather in Leah’s kitchen while Claudia’s boys watch Abby for me, and my two sisters do each other’s roots.