Natalie is giving a speech in class, and she wanted to use one of the poems that my dad had written.

She read a couple and one was about shopping, and all I could think of was, “Kisses and squeezy hugs.”

Cue the wavy flashback camera thing:

Many, many years ago, my mom sent my dad to the grocery store with a shopping list.

At the bottom were two items, “Kisses and Squeezy Hugs.”  (I bet you can see where this is going)

About an hour and a half later, he frantically called my mom from the store.

He could not find the squeezy hugs. (He thought that it was one of the new brands of cereal out there)

According to family lore, it took at least 15 minutes for my mom to stop laughing, and explain to my clueless dad that, “Kisses and Squeezy Hugs,” were not items on the shopping list, but a romantic note that spouses sometimes leave for each other.

I guess that every family has stories like this, and I’ve been thinking about ours a lot lately.