Our Love Story: The Power of a Kiss
When I met David Farris I was twenty one. It was the summer of the Gastown riots and Love-ins in Stanley Park… A time of upheaval in Vancouver and also in our relationship. We fell in love. But then one day he said he was going to get a part for his much loved motorbike. He called me three days later from Thunder Bay Ontario, to say he’d found the part! (He had a dry sense of humor.) He continued on to Montreal and spent the next five years living a Peter Pan lifestyle designing and flying enormous kites. When the 1976 Olympics came along he got a contract to fly those kites down Sherbrooke Street and fill the Biosphere, a geodesic dome, with them. So when the dome burnt down all his
hopes went up in flames and he came back!
David and his beloved Motorbike
Davids extraordinary kites
David and his coat tails getting ready for take off
He expected to take up with me where we left off, but I now had a growing business and had replaced him. It took another six years of chaos and heartache for me to realize he was the one and I accepted his sixth proposal. We had a fairytale wedding and were settling into marital harmony, when the first Valentine’s Day came along. I was quite shocked when he came home with nothing! He said, “It’s a Hallmark holiday…Everyday I show you I love you.” I wasn’t buying it. I locked myself in the bathroom and cried my eyes out. He almost kicked the door down so I decided to forgive him. We were a passionate pair, but we had to learn each other’s love language! After that, flowers came on Valentine’s and a beautifully cooked dinner almost every night. He got to ride his motorbike with the wind and come home the happiest of men to make me the happiest of women.
I also convinced him to kiss in public, after a month in Italy. As Hafiz says: One regret that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my death bed is that we did not kiss enough.
So on Valentine’s and on every other day too,
kiss a lot, kiss often, kiss enough
‘for your one wild and precious life.’
-Mary Oliver
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