When I was a small child in the early 1960’s my family were a close-knit group. In the centre of our family matrix was our mother, Kay - a person made in the original mold of loving mothers. My parents ran a small grocery store in Chilliwack, BC. The store started out as a tiny frontage butcher shop run by Art, a man who could not possibly be less interested in butchering. Our living quarters were in the back. The family grew to include 5 children over 9 years and that meant that our early years were marked by contact that was far too close. Tumultuous feasts of sibling conflict and resolution ensued. Perhaps counterintuitively, all the fighting actually brought us closer together in spirit.
Despite their native intelligence, both parents had only grade ten educations, with all the sophistication that you might expect from what were two Mennonite hicks from the prairies, barely themselves in their twentieth year. On our family bookshelves there were no Dr. Spock parenting books. The intensity of their love for their children was their simple light. As for most of us, their real education followed along on the path of their lives
Times have changed over the decades but back then Kay reveled in her stereotypical role of baking, cooking and nurturing. Notwithstanding her enthusiastic endorsement of traditional role-play, Kay was not one to always stay in her lane. She raptured the limelight moments of motherhood and never underplayed her essential matriarchal importance. Along with providing delicious food, warm flannel sheets, and other doses of motherly love, she also entertained complaints. A subject that particularly pissed her off was her birthing experiences at the hands of doctors.
Back then women were often heavily sedated while giving birth and Kay never ceased being angry about not being present when her babies came into the world. But once conscious and holding her babe in arms, she regained her dominion. Often was told the story of how the stuffy faced doctors and nurses of the time were recommending bottled baby milk formulations, but no, she knew better. Breast milk was best and damn what the doctors said.
Though of course I remember absolutely nothing of it, as a baby I know that I must have suckled at Kay’s breast. Later, having children of my own, I learned anew the intimacy of breast-feeding, though as a father the experience was a vicarious one: hairy-chested, I had no tit to offer. In the tired middle of the night I played that important role that every mother knows: useless as fuck husband. Still, such fatherly experience inevitably includes at least some small measure of cuddling with wife and child and this is sufficient to learn the intense physical intimacy of a suckling child. In the art of human touch there is surely nothing as pure.
What is so strange about this back-drop of early familial intimacy is that somehow, once weaned of the tit, each of us in our family succumbed to the awkwardness of touch. Subtle social forces were applied - exerted as tiny repetitive pressures. By the age of six we had all somehow learned that a handshake was good and that a hug or a cuddle among the parents or children would be weird.
To anyone born after about 1980 it may be hard to imagine, but back in the day, aside from the experience of a lovers embrace, hugs were barely a thing. Greetings and goodbyes back then were constructed around the formalities and traditions of polite society. Handshakes ruled the day. For those of us living in the middle-class English-speaking Americas, there was no comfortable accommodation of the hugs that two decades later became a commonplace normality. Europeans and French Canadians may indeed have kissed and hugged each other, but that hardly applied to us stuck-up anglophiles.
Perhaps some will tell me that I misremember all this, but I don’t think so. The 1980’s were a transition zone for hugging. Then, quite abruptly the ground started to shift. By the mid 1990’s the zeitgeist had changed irrevocably. Where and how exactly this change came to be I cannot claim to know. Social scientists can probably provide the answer, but all I know is that among friends and family the traditions of greetings and goodbyes had dramatically shifted into a better world: warmth now presided over formality. Hugs became the de facto currency of private social engagement.
There was still awkwardness, of course. There remained a grey line separating acquaintance from friend, and business from pleasure. We all know that awkwardness. A new arrival to the scene joins the dinner party and a few hours later is standing at the door along with your other friends, who of course get hugs. What to do? A sizing up of the situation occurs. Murky signals are exchanged and a decision is made: for this one a handshake and for that one a hug. Nervous laughs... maybe at next meeting we will not be so squeamish.
Dicey moments aside, as time progressed we all got used to being less stuffy about hugging our close friends and family. Hellos and goodbyes meant hugs. Which brings us to today. Suddenly, our world of friendly touch has been upended. Fist-bumps are now ghost gestures. To our friends from six feet distances we crook our arms in symbol of the hugs we cannot actually give.
Like any sensible person I do not, in the midst of a pandemic, gainsay the need for safety precautions. Masks and distancing are necessary measures and are proper strictures in service of the greater good. Still, it is also true that we are now suddenly bereft of hugs. The real ones, that come with a body squeeze and an endorphin rush.
Relativists will no doubt point out that complaints over missed hugs cannot be compared to the selfless sacrifices of, say, marines that stormed the beaches of Normandy. They too are correct. But damned though I may be saying it, just as surely as one would miss the sun not rising, I miss my goddamned hugs. Pathetic and self-sorry, I imagine myself a soldier left alone on a barren lost battlefield. Where has everyone gone? Life has become grey and dull. As we all must, I obey for now. No hug for you! And none for me.
In a year of many miseries, people have suffered grievously. Still it is also true that a small dose of ordinary pleasure was suddenly taken from all of us; taken cruelly, and for some, it should be pointed out, the pleasure has been taken too soon and forever.
Though still in the distance a faint spark, the light of scientific progress can now be seen. It is an encouraging sign and that light will surely grow. There will eventually be joy and celebration. Still, in the wake of the vaccines there will remain lingering reminders of our pandemic times. There will no doubt be a large cohort of the afraid who will continue to live in fear of a disease spent. I fully expect in the future to hear loud songs praising of the death of handshakes. Crossing to the other side of the sidewalk when passing will be the new normal. In the ascendant these people may even be righteous.
But
for myself I choose an alternate prayer. A prayer that the multitudes will join me in the hope that hugs among friends may not soon be forgotten. Hail to the day that
hugs will be reborn!
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The above extended whine is of course Greg's, but with Alice as endorser. The year would have been glum indeed without her to provide some of the missing hugs. So what have we been up to? It has not been all bad. After departing Mexico, spring, summer and fall were spent away from the boat. Summer brought "relaxation of rules" and some measure of enjoyable activity. Now comes winter, with rules anew. There will be no going south for us this winter. Sigh.
