The Leap

Throughout the story, kisses symbolize the connection of loved ones. The role of kisses in the Flying Avalons’ act is repeatedly emphasized. After successful shows, “Harry Avalon would skip quickly to the front rows and point out the smear of my mother’s lipstick, just off the edge of his mouth” (Paragraph 5), proof of their mid-air conjunction and their love. Newspaper accounts of the disaster dwelt upon the air-kisses that proceeded the final act, when “they puckered their lips in mock kisses, lips destined ‘never again to meet’” (Paragraph 6). In the final line of the story, the narrator “[feels] the brush of her [mother’s] lips” (Paragraph 25)—a kiss that celebrates, as in the trapeze act, the miraculous meeting of the two participants, in this case mother and daughter. The motif thus supports the theme of The Unlikely Miracle of Life, suggesting that each moment in which loved ones cross is as extraordinary and unlikely as the midair kisses of trapeze artists.

The names of Harry and Anna Avalon and their circus act, The Flying Avalons, comprise a motif that alludes to the Isle of Avalon, a mythical island in Arthurian legend.