The Last Word On Nothing

There are hugs, and then there are hugs. Am I right?

Hugging is not one-size-fits-all. It’s a skill, partly innate, and not everyone has it. We all know people who are huggers, and people who just aren’t. There are also people who like to be hugged and people who curl away as a hugger approaches, even flinching a little at their touch.

The best huggers hug with their insides as much as their arms and bodies. Love and kindness and empathy pour from them into you. You feel calm in their embrace, for that few moments. Non-huggers leave a cushion of air between you. They’re all arms; the hugger tries to avoid full contact. It’s like an air kiss, but bodily. An air hug, let’s call it.

My mom was an expert hugger. There was no air and no holding back—she came for you, arms already outstretched, then enfolded you with her whole self. In my teen-to-adult years, she’d suddenly reach for me making this funny grunting sound, as if needing an itch scratched in the middle of her back. “Need a hug, need a hug from my girl,” she’s say with a goofy grimace, and then she’d steal one. (I’d let her.) She’d hold on for a while, big brown eyes closed, smelling my hair, easing whatever it was inside her that needed a caress. And easing what was in me, even when I didn’t realize there was something sore there. (She’d dot my face with little kisses, too. With sound effects. But the hugs were the thing.)

Hugs are healing. They get us off to a good start. Remember “kangaroo care”—the skin-to-skin embrace developed in the 1970s for hospitalized pre-term infants? Scientists realized that such intimate contact could help even the weakest babies develop healthy hearts, smooth respiration, proper sleep patterns, etc. It’s hugging at its rawest, nude on nude. It’s how we are supposed to begin life outside of the womb.

And then, with continued embraces, babies stay healthier and their brains develop better. That physical contact can actually modify our genetically coded responses to stress. Kids that go without it can have all kinds of behavioral problems.

Even once we grow up, hugs continue to make things better. A mutual embrace reduces stress and stirs up energy and happy hormones. It softens us; people can actually become more empathetic over time with more hugging. And it’s not just the physical closeness of bodies, the tight squeeze, that decides a hug is good. It’s when something subtler goes on, when a hug says “trust me” and means it. A good hugger can reach your soul and cup it in their hands. They can absorb some of your pain and replace it with ease. They leave you breathless for a moment, not because they’ve squeezed too hard, but because your body has to reset to make room for what you’ve been given.

Over the years I’ve noticed how different people in my life hug. Thank goodness my husband gives a warm, loving one. He’s big, I’m small, and our hugs are all encompassing. I remember my mom and stepdad hugging the same way, usually in the kitchen. Ours often happen there, too, by the sink. Sometimes he squeezes a bit too hard, or lifts me off the floor, or adds to the hug something he thinks is funny that isn’t (i.e., a lick to my face). But overall, I trust his hugs. They are filled with the good stuff. (I used to love watching him hug his grandmother. She’d say, ‘John Frederick, give me the good stuff.’” And he would.)

Some of my friends offer their souls; others seem tentative, unsure. They care about me equally, but certain people don’t know how to spill over into another being. Knowing their histories, I get it. Not everyone had a “huggie” mom giving a constant lesson in affection. (It could be in the DNA, too.) In some families, love was hard won in any form. There was rarely a sudden, just-because embrace that left behind a red splotch (dad’s stubble) or a sugary scent (mom). It’s sad that not all parents fully inhale their kids. How cold that must feel.

It’s interesting to hug these friends now. I do hugs like my mom did, and sometimes I sense a friend struggling to reply in full but unsure how. I wonder if I should pull back, then, but really I want to give more, to make up for lost affection. I’m always hopeful my hugs sand their jagged edges a tiny bit. I think maybe they do.

When my mother was dying, at first hugging was virtually an all-day activity. We took breaks to eat and sleep and go to medical appointments, but everything that happened was bookended by an embrace. For a while, she gave and gave, the way she always had. And she received us warmly, her fears calmed for a time by closeness.

But then, that stopped.

It was one way I knew my mom had truly disconnected, that the tumor in her brain had won. She stopped initiating hugs. She stopped hugging back. Her arms stayed at her sides, under the blankets. She’d lost that ache to get close to others, even to me. And my arms no longer soothed her, because an empty shell doesn’t need comforting, doesn’t need anything at all.

But, knowing it’s what she would have done for me, I kept gripping her tightly, pretending I could still fill in the spaces her pain had gouged out and left behind. Even after her last breath.

One for the road. Just in case.