intimacy (in which i defend being a hugger)

It is late morning, a quiet cloudy day. I am in my bathroom, and I can hear Gabriel making truck sounds downstairs. I am doing a rather Papa-like thing: reading bits of the New Yorker while sitting on the toilet.

Suddenly I hear Gabriel calling on his way up the stairs to find me. Mama!! Mama, are you in your bathroom??

Yes!

Did you shut the dark? (Which means did I shut the door to the large closet in our bedroom, the one he has to walk by to get to the bathroom, the one that oozes scary darkness when the door is left ajar).

Yes!

After hearing that, he barrels into my bathroom and throws his arms around the top half of me, sending the magazine flying.

Mama, I had to find you so I could put my arms around you and love you!!

I hug him, hard. He slips behind the gauzy white curtain and laughs big belly laughs as he reaches through the fabric to touch my face. I can touch your nose! I can touch your lips! He stretches the fabric across his face, smashes his nose flat. Ha ha!

I should remind you, I am still sitting on the toilet at this point.

Oh, the joys of intimacy! What new mother, during those misty midnight nursing sessions when she and her baby are the only two people awake in the world, would imagine the ways boundaries continue to blur as her baby grows up?

Of course, there are also the unexpected ways the fuzzy boundaries suddenly become more distinct. Last night during Frances' bath she announced she had to pee. I dried off her lower half and then threw the towel over my head, to give her some privacy. It didn't work. I can't go, Mama. Still wearing my blue terry cloth burka, I fumbled for the doorknob and waited in the hall. When she had summoned me back in, Frances explained that putting a towel on my head is definitely not giving her privacy. You see, you have to be alone to have privacy.

I've been thinking a lot about the fluctuating boundaries between us, and about the necessity of touch as we define and re-define how rigid those boundaries need be. Gabriel had to find me in the bathroom so he could love me - that is, hug me. He almost always says I love you when he initiates a hug. For him, touching is loving. The inner feeling and the outer sensation are one.

We begin in a state of near constant touch with our children. I remember an achy, itchy feeling in my arms if I'd been away from my babies for too long (then, it was an hour - now I get it after a day). The touching is without conscious thought, instinctive; at least it felt that way to me. Brushing my cheek along Frances' tiny smooth cheek, I imagine she felt both the safety of my presence and the extraordinary surprise of having a cheek herself. The sensation of being so near, yet separate.

It is all rather paradoxical; the holding, the nursing, the nearness lends itself to a sense of being utterly continuous with one's baby. And yet, through this near-merging physical way in the world, the baby learns that she has a body. An experience of where she begins and ends, a wholeness and completeness all within the bounds of her own body. Being awash in togetherness forms the foundation of our capacity to be alone.

As children grow and become more separate, they return as needed for the reassuring reminder of togetherness. I suppose the object relations idea is that the original togetherness is internalized eventually. Thus I don't need to drive the two hours home to my mother for some snuggle time whenever being me feels rough and panicky (that said, it wouldn't hurt - snuggling with my mom does make me feel stronger, more capable of dealing with myself, and I'd do it every day if I could).

How I love to watch this back and forth - this ever-shifting together and separate - in my own children! Gabriel was fine on his own this morning, until he wasn't, and then he needed to love me a little to feel comfortable in his own skin again. I marvel that he knows this, that he came to find me, that once he had some together time (albeit in the bathroom) he was ready to head off and play some more.

It is not always smooth sailing. Lately Gabriel is experimenting with aggression and violence (instead of affection) to figure out his boundaries and mark his separateness. I surely prefer him wrapping himself around my leg to whacking me with a lime green rhythm stick while I make dinner. And I do not always keep pace with my children; I hug a little too long, or I neglect to initiate a much-needed hug. I throw a towel over my head instead of doing the decent thing and leaving the room.

My dad was a toucher. He liked holding hands and full-body smashing hugs. It was embarrassing when I was 12 and in public places where other 12 year olds might be, but for the most part I loved how he was so like a large, affectionate puppy. Once Edith told me that I hug just like my dad. I almost fell over. That idea struck me with an accompanying wave of emotion...like him? I do, really? To receive a hug from my dad was to feel loved, completely. Just like receiving a hug from Gabriel. I like to think of some long loving reach, a cool hand on the back of the neck, connecting him to his grandpa.

With every tickle, every snuggle over a book, we give the gift of being a body in the world, with all the accompanying sensations and pleasures that brings. At least I hope we do! I hope the thousands of hugs communicate to my children that they have a whole body, one that is integrated into a whole, irreducibly unique and loveable self, one that will do just fine when - someday - mama hugs are farther than a flight of stairs away. 

(I cannot resist ending with this picture from the days after Gabriel's birth. Touching between these two is a lot more complicated nowadays, but somehow just as essential, as they push and pull and figure out their relationship.)