The Hug

Everyone has been or hugged.  Or have they?  Some people like being hugged and others don't.  It is possible to know whether a person is receptive to a hug or not and this is not taught.  It is part of our innate instincts.   When you approach a person who does not like hugs, their physical stance sends a vibe or a subtle signal.  They take a deep breath while their head slides back on their neck, their body stiffens, and their eyes widen like a deer in the headlights.

When you attempt physical contact with someone who postures that it is not welcome, you are left feeling like you have committed an offence. You feel that you are not liked by the offended person  unless you have great self esteem,  then you chalk it up to the fact that they just don’t like hugs.  Either way you are not likely to attempt to hug them again and they have achieved their goal of avoiding hugs.

There are various types of hugs depending on the intent and the depth of the relationship of the people involved.  A hug can be a form of communicating a greeting or a farewell.  It can express an emotion when something happens to celebrate such as good news, an event like New Year's Eve or a birthday.  It can be a form of affection or intimacy between those in a romantic relationship.  It can be scooping up a child and holding them tight to show them you love them and will keep them safe.  Or, it can be an tight embrace to bring someone in to your protective arms to comfort and console them. People might be receptive to one type of hug but not another.  They might not mind a superficial brief cheek to cheek greeting hug, but not a complete tightly squeezed emotional embrace.  

  Researchers have found that  a body’s response to a hug results in the body releasing hormones that decreases stress and elevates mood leading to feelings of trust, safety and love. So why don't some people avoid hugging? Psychologists suggest that a person’s hugging patterns are the result of the emotional development and a person’s and comfort with physical touching is developed in childhood.  Babies are completely embraced in warm fluid in the womb before they are born.  Then out in the world in a cold dry place they are bare and vulnerable and crave what is familiar to feel safe and secure.  We swaddling babies when they are born and hold them close to the warmth of our body and they learn to associate hugs with feeling safe, secure and loved.  

If children are not hugged, they grow up feeling that hugs are foreign.  Anything that stretches our experience can be fearful.    Children learn to withdraw from things that they feel uncomfortable with and it is difficult for the body to process affection if they have been isolated from it in early years.   The fear of hugging becomes embedded in our nervous system into adulthood. 

Hug avoidance can also be due to encountering a bad experience with physical touch or intimacy such as hitting or unwanted sexual acts at any age.   In this case hug avoidance is withdrawing from that which feels uncomfortable, not from the absence of it while growing up, but from a bad experience with it when it happened.

My experiences as a child involves a hodgepodge of experiences of no touch and bad touch.  I am okay with the greeting and farewell hug and I can get excited and give a celebratory hug but that is about all.   I don’t like being held when I am feeling bad because it makes me feel worse.  I am hesitant to give hugs because I am afraid to be rejected.  Even with young children I fear rejection, and they should be hugged always. 

I don't remember being hugged by my mother or father as a child.  My brothers and sisters don't remember being hugged either.  Dad was raised in the era where men were to to be strong and that meant not showing feelings or affection.  As well, his mother was not a hugger so he did not have a role model to learn to hug    She never initiated hugging and when we as adults would embrace her she would respond simply by placing her arms around us and slightly touch our backs or shoulders depending on how tall we were.  I always wondered if the strength a hug was proportional to the amount of love felt each person hugging.  I was confused by grandmas hugs because I knew she loved me.  I felt that way until my brothers and sisters revealed that their experience hugging grandma was the same.  Now, when we give each other a hug on the fly or hug with a weak embrace, we will say,

"Oh, a grandma hug." and chuckle.

Mom never hugged us as children and her parents had no physical contact with us ever except a whack on the knuckles with a ruler when we made mistakes while playing the piano.  Granny tried to teach me to play piano but I didn't enjoy it.  The lessons made me nervous, I was so afraid to make a mistake so I'm glad they didn't last for longer than a year or so.

Dad did start to hug us when we were young adults.  He got some kind of awakening and he told us that we should be showing love for each other by hugging.  I don't know where he received this revelation but he seemed sincere and so we did the greeting and farewell hug and it was just that to me.  So, if I gave my dad a ceremoniously greeting hug in front of my mother, I would have to hug her as well.  I never liked hugging my mother,  It was awkward and contrived. 

Because I had no idea how good a hug could make me feel, my visit with my Dad in the hospital the day after he got a private room turned into an event that I will remember forever.  It began with me focusing on how good it was to see him in a private room with a big area for visitors.  Trisha and Diana were there when I arrived and we all chatted together about every day things for a while then Diana left to go home.  She had arranged for her entire family to visit later that day so she went home to bring them back.

Trisha then left to attend to errands.  I walked with Trish to the hallway then she left.   I hesitated before I went back into Dad's room.  I felt uneasy being alone with him.  I rarely was as Mom was always around and if not her, other family members were.  With Mom around I didn't have to say much because they were usually annoyed with each other and bantered back and forth and I became an observer.  If other family members were around, I focused on visiting with my sisters and Dad would most times converse with my brothers.  I learned not to include myself in the guys conversation because when I did, whatever the dialogue was, they abruptly stopped talking.

I hesitantly returned to Dad’s room and sat down in a chair by his bed.  I wanted to say that I too had to go.  Even though I was uncomfortable, for some reason I retreated into the chair and gave Dad my full attention.

"Diana will be back with her kids and Karl  I said.  He already knew that but it was a good place to start conversing.  

He nodded his head in acknowledgement.  We then talked about how busy Diana and Karl were starting to harvest their crops.  We talked a while about the farm and how we hoped the weather held out for them, about Daria's new boyfriend Ansel and about how much better Dad's current room was compared to the one he had yesterday.  I was starting to feel settled in this unique opportunity to be alone with my dad.   We talked endlessly and before we knew it, it was about time Diana and her family were expected to arrive.  

I had been putting off talking to my dad about something I had learned from my aunt.  It was something that had happened to my mom and dad and had been hid from my generation.  As I think about it now it seems weird that my siblings and I went through a good part of life not knowing something that everyone in the older generation knew about.  I wonder if they saw us as we thought we were rather than who they knew us to be.  Or, did it make a difference.  Maybe how we thought of ourselves was really the same as who they knew us to be.

It was no secret to anyone that my mom did not like my Dad's family.  She rarely went to any of dad's family occasions and spoke of them with negative undertones.  It made her mad that I loved my Grandmother so much, perhaps more than her.  One day I was at my Aunt's home.  My cousins were there and we were sitting outside drinking beer and wine.

While I was under the influence of the alcohol and the filter of saying things that would not otherwise be said, I asked my Aunt,

"Why do you think my mom is distant to your side of the family?"

I asked very discretely.  I could have used the word “hate" rather than "distant".

Her answer was bizarre, out of the world unbelievable, something that made me wonder if I heard it right. I repeated it so that I made sure I heard what she had said.

'Yes, she said. and then revealed more details to the story that she was revealing.

"Oh, I said, and became silent.  The subject was changed.  What else could be said by her and my silence signalled that I had enough to digest without further discussion.  My cousins said nothing and did not react with any surprise.  Obviously they knew.  

The next morning I was still could not believe what I had heard so I  phoned her and repeated what she told me and asked her if that was correct.  She told me that it was.  The conversation was so matter of fact.  She did not ask me if I had heard it before, if I was okay with the new information or if my brothers or sister knew.  It was what it was.  I was numb with the truth.  I knew my brothers and sisters did not know and I was not going to be the one to tell them.  It was clear that my mom and dad did not want us knowing. It was their truth and theirs to tell.  So I kept silent about it and told no one.

So now that I am sitting alone with dad and we are having a good talk.  Our conversation was not laboured and I felt a closeness with him.  If I was going to ever talk to him about this secret it would be now. By this time he knew I knew.  So, I asked,

"When I lived with grandma when I was little, was I happy?"

"Yes," he said.  You were very small then.

That was about as much as I felt I could ask because the rest of the story was not directly about me.  My main concern for me was how I was affected as a child when my mother left my older brother Carl, and I to live with my grandmother and if it had anything to do with my insecurities as an adult.  It certainly answered the question of why I loved my grandmother so much.

He then went on to say, "you were a beautiful child."

"Yes, I know.  Mom told me I was a beautiful baby and that the word got out at the hospital and then all the nurses came to see what I looked like” I replied.  

It was a small hospital so it was not like there was a pilgrimage of nurses coming to see the beautiful baby.

"It's too bad that I grew out of that" I said.

"You didn't", Dad said, "you are still beautiful like your mother."

"Thanks Dad", I said.  I do look like my mother and she is beautiful I thought.

I could not have asked for my time with Dad to go so well.  I never thought of wanting a last good talk with him before he died because  it was not something I had experienced.  On top of that, he had complimented me which I not experienced from my father before.  

We chatted a bit more and then Diana arrived with her family.  I wanted them to visit with Dad alone so I got up from my chair and surrendered it to one of them.  I gestured towards my father for a farewell hug when it became something so unexpected.  Dad pulled me in close and tight and I transcended the physical.  Nothing else in the world existed.  I felt like our souls became united.  I was in a place where there were no problems, nothing emotionally negative, just peace, joy and where I truly knew who I was.  There are no labels for who I became aware of that I was, I just was and I belonged.  Belonged to who or what I don't know, I just knew that I belonged and was loved.  I'm not sure that belonging and being loved are anything different.  It is what our soul searches for; one person connecting with another as purely and completely as we were created to do. 

The hug was not a lengthy one but it was the most empowering I ever had up until then and had since.  

When we released our embrace I turned toward the door.  I acknowledged Diana and her family and looked at Dad and told him I'd see him the next day.  When I reached the door I turned to wave to my dad.  His arm reached out to me and he said,

"You don't have to leave"

“I'll let you visit with Diana now.  They have come to see you".  The truth is that they came to say good bye.  Every one knew that but it was not said.

Still with his arm stretched out to me he said,

"That was good wasn't it?"

"What?", I asked.

"Our visit" he said.

I smiled and nodded and said, “yes, the best.”

As I journeyed the maze of hallways to the front door of the hospital I felt like I was skipping,  My heart was singing and my legs moved to the beat of the tune.

Just short of the front door I noticed Carl enter.  

“Crap”, I thought to myself.  Diana wanted some private time with Dad to be with her family.  

He approached me and said,

"I want you to know that the family appreciates what you are doing for dad but some of us think you are doing things to show off your knowledge and taking advantage of the system and we feel you should not be doing this."  he informed me.

He was talking about me taking action to get Dad a private room the day before.  I felt that this happened before but it was no deja vu; it actually happened before.  So this did not surprise me.  It happened the first time a few years prior to this.   Dad was in the hospital for heart surgery and I happened to be working on the same hospital unit where Dad was recovering.  Before Dad was to be discharged home I thought the whole family should meet and coordinate the help that Mom and Dad would need.  Mom was frail then, actually she had been for a while spending most of the day in bed and Dad took care of the shopping,  house chores and dispensing Mom's medications.  I booked a conference room at the hospital and all the siblings came including their spouses.  Prior to us meeting I  told all of them about a utility elevator they could use that would be quicker than using the public one.  As well I gave access to my sister to the staff washroom by opening the door with my key. When we finally all gathered in the conference room my brother Carl started the meeting by exclaiming that I should have not given access to the staff bathroom to my sister and the utility elevator and that if I continued to abuse my staff benefits he would have my job.

After he said this I took a deep breath and waited a minute for anyone who wanted to to comment on his declaration.  No one did.  I looked around and noticed the discomfort in the room and the room remained silent.  My mom was looking down at her lap, her arms rested on the edge of the table and her hands folded together in a fist, one rubbing the other alternately around and around.  She did not say anything.

"Okay, lets look at what help Mom and Dad will need from us when Dad goes home." I said breaking the silence and then the meeting progressed as planned.

So this time  Carl took this stance with me I was not surprised,  It was as normal as his breathing and I was used to be on the receiving end of this.  I’m not sure why he does this but he came by this behaviour honestly.  My Granny had also done this to me years before using the exact words,

"I will have your job."  she said at a time when she felt threatened  by me.

I didn't care what Carl thought and I knew he was only speaking for himself.

"Okay." I simply replied.. no need to get into it with him.  

“Diana and her family are here visiting with dad so give them a chance to visit” I informed him.

“Okay, I’ll go get coffee and get Karin, (his wife who was parking the car) to meet me at the coffee bar downstairs.” he said.

He motioned to give me a hug so I gave him a grandma hug and then turned around and exited through the hospital doors.

Nothing could hamper the euphoria I felt from my visit with dad.  No even Carl’s cooked up demeaning attempt.