Time Raveler

I've become accustomed to being alone a good deal of the time: unwanted divorce, kids grown and off living lives of their own.  I've heard all the arguments about the wonderful freedoms one gains with being single, but I haven't found those freedoms to be worth the losses, and one loss I noticed most keenly in a very simple fashion last night.

I was visiting dear friends and their extended family while they were in town for a brief visit.  Looking forward to seeing their new baby for the first time, it was a special evening.  While we waited for the baby to wake up, we ate, talked, laughed together. The evening was sweltering, so the young mother was reaching behind, braiding her hair to get it off her neck, and I asked her to let me do it.  I took her hair in my hands, soft and lovely and fine in texture, and without a comb or brush, I wove it into a very imperfect French braid.  I had no idea, before I started, of all the memories that would well up inside me of similarly doing this for my own daughters, and  they made me aware how much I missed doing such simple services that involved the human touch.

Soon I was given the chance to hold the baby after he woke up.  Utterly charming, he smiled and reached out to be held and to touch everyone.   When I cuddled him, I realized, once again, how much I miss such simple things that I once took for granted on a daily basis for years.  No grandchildren of my own yet to fill this gap.

A friend spoke to me recently of the idea of "skin hunger," the need for human touch.  It is a real thing, a real ache, and I'm sure a sore place that many people aren't even quite aware exists in them, or have any idea how to fix.  Some try by reaching out sexually to strangers or people they barely know, but that only increases the emptiness if there is no  real love behind the expression.   Last night, touching and being touched by people I love, was sweet.  If you have it regularly, cherish it.