touch me babe

the doors' song runs through my head.
i am often surprised at how much touch means, and how little of it i get.

i grew up in a touchy feely family. we always hugged and kissed, EVERYONE when we arrived and when we left. this was because my Grams was going to get hugs and kisses from everyone. so she raised her children this way. it got to be quite an ordeal when there are thirty people at a christmas eve gathering and such. start saying goodbye about fifteen minutes before you need to leave. and yes, we had to kiss our cousins. and we didn't mind so much when we got older. everybody hugged and kissed everybody.

when i married my husband, i became isolated in the worst way. untouched. (not by him mind you. though i'm certain you have gathered that by now from my poems). but it is an entirely different kind of touch that comes from a spouse. that is a deep touch, a therapeutic touch. something mending to the soul.

but in all these many years of marriage i have found one of the things i miss most is having the cousins and aunts and uncles to hug and kiss me.

a friend always commented that i said thank you when she hugged me, but that was some three years into marriage and i was horribly untouched by that point. a week now and again of family isn't enough to fill the tanks of a touchy feely type like me.

(now that's not to say i even feel comfortable with every stranger i meet touching me. no, that's not it at all. it has to be the right context. and now, it has to be women. men hugging me, aside from priests, freaks me out. i don't need it. i don't like it, and except for those men who are also friends with my husband, i don't encourage it.)

so long it has been since i've had anyone just touch me (and know i mean WOMEN, when i say that, okay?), that i forget how meaningful it is.

at the poetry intensive, the matriarch made me cry. i cry easily. it's not something i hide or try to get around. if the tears want to come, i let them. she hugged me constantly after that. every time she saw me. she's italian. i was so grateful for the hugs, i had to thank her when i got home. i hadn't realized how much it meant.

i came across a passage in my readings that says, touching people wakens their spirit. it quickens their soul (my paraphrase). and i thought, yes. that is it exactly.

what my Grams may have purposed to quicken her own soul, quickened mine as well.

i languished in the years i have been apart from my extended family for want of their touch.

i was sitting in a bible study tuesday (see, i'm not a heathen! thank you very much). and peter, my sister's and my favorite priest at this chapel i go to, sat beside me, very close. he tucked his chair right next to the big recliner i absconded (i love a comfy chair) in the library where we met.

we were reading 1 timothy 3, the passage where it says,

silly women at home are led astray by divers lusts.

i kept giggling when we'd read this passage. and peter elbowed me.

i giggled some more because it was like something my family would do. and, well, i in the broadest sense of the word, peter is my family.

but that he was unafraid to elbow me for giggling, i enjoyed immensely. i'm sure it is tough on priests having to deal with silly women. giggling women. with all our divers lusts. i am a handful. but it felt like God was sitting beside me in him, and just enjoying being there. present. within touching distance. very nice.

the new priest at our chapel (we're small but have a bevy of priests from varying traditions, which as you know is my kind of thing), is a woman. i'll save her name for a later date. but she walks up, hugs me and kisses me with a warmth and gentleness that makes me think about changing teams (ha! just checking to see if you are really paying attention. i would never change teams. i'm a devoted manfan).

anyway, i love being touched by WOMEN. and those who don't weird me out.

some touches are freaky and creepy, those i avoid. even a handshake can be creepy given the right circumstance.

but i miss my family. i miss touching them and them touching me. this isolated existance we westerners live is too much for me. i need to be with people when i'm in their midst. maybe that is why i have so much trouble entering in. no one kissed and hugged me when i arrived. (though my priests do, and helen, the lovely 84 year old).

praise be to God.