Space/Touch

We have lost the art of public tenderness, these small gestures of wiping and washing; we have forgotten how abjectly the body welcomes a formal touch. ― Anne Enright, The Gathering

When the Offspring were small, they all enjoyed physical contact to varying degrees.  Herself spent many years carrying them in turn in the baby sling, adjusting them in her lap as they read together, gathering them together for family pictures with arms around one another or hands on shoulders or heads.  

As the Offspring have aged, their need for parental touch has diminished significantly. Though all of them still tolerate a kiss goodnight or an occasional light touch, on the whole they have personal space spheres that have grown as they have.  They hug their friends more than they do Herself.  That is the way of the world, Herself knows:  as the Offspring approach adulthood, their physical independence from her mirrors the mental independence that they are working to achieve.  

She respects their autonomy.  She  follows their leads, stepping back if she senses that they might shrug off a touch, and waiting for a slight inclination towards her that indicates that she may still kiss the tops of their heads goodnight.  Every now and then, she misses certain physical activities of yore - carrying a sleeping toddler to bed, comforting a worrying child with reassuring arms, soothing someone's scrape or bruise with a pat and a bandage.  Those were tiny joys in their own ways. 

These types of touch seem to be limited to parent/small child interactions.  As adults, we feel constrained:  we are hesitant to touch a tender scar, an aching joint, a sorrowing head. Are we afraid of bearing too close a witness to someone's pain or hurt?  Or perhaps it is the unspoken intimation that to comfort a person -- or to accept comforting -- somehow implies weakness.  No one likes to be perceived as wanting consolation or care; no one likes to look fragile or uncertain or emotional. It's dangerous. We suffer in silence, untouched.

And untouching.  For much as we yearn to lay a hand that might relieve an aching body or console an aching soul, it seems too intrusive. We are hesitant to ask if we may do so, too, because we don't want to imply that another is in need.  People limp onward in their own personal spheres, disguising pains that could be ameliorated by physical touch, and hiding longings to reach out to others.  

Survival of the fittest has turned into evolution into a void of human touch. 

That seems wrong. 

Can we change it?  I think we should try.  Gently, patiently.  One person at a time.