I did something for someone and she showed her appreciation by giving me a hug. We stood together in this friendly embrace for some moments, hugging, rocking slightly, until she said, “No one likes to give up on a hug.”
I grew up in a hugless home, where being held was not allowed. I understand now some of the reasons for it — abuse was a rampant and unrestricted beast in my youth — but I carried the fact of it into my early adulthood. I made a friend in high school, and she introduced me to her family. Her sister was a spectacular hugger, who would enfold me each time I saw her. The first time this happened, I was startled and wary, an undomesticated wild thing unused to the human graces. I learned to relax in the embrace of my friends’ family and we managed to weld our friendship into a marriage.
In our later years together, I would hug my mother and quietly count the seconds of her acceptance. After awhile, she would say “that’s enough,” and gently push me away. She did not do this because she did not love me; that love had been abundantly demonstrated for all the years I had her. I had taught her how to voice aloud the emotions in those “3 little words,” and teased her when she said them without prompting. She had even gotten to the point where she would say to me “See? I said it.” I did not, before I wrote this, ask my sister about her hugs; I did not want to get into a “mom hugged you best” conversation, but I know that my sister is a good hugger for her son once chided me on my hugging skill. “C’mon, Unc! That was weak; you need to come strong with that hug.” All of her four grown children are human hugging machines, who value the physical transfer of internal emotion from one to another.
I saw a profile on a TV program of people and organizations that engage in what is called “professional hugging” and cuddling. People can pay professionals to engage in sessions of therapeutic hugging. These situations are supposed to be completely non-sexual, but can involve the most complex and intertwined acts of cuddling. I don’t remember what qualifications were required for the therapist, but I remember my sister-in-law placing her cheek against my neck to check for a fever, and thought that she would be well placed in an occupation such as that.
On a social networking site, a friend recently posted this: “One day, someone is going to hug you so tight all of your broken pieces will stick back together.” The friend is a hugger, who has taught me that the proper way to hug is heart to heart. Maybe this is what some of us seek to give, and some others of us seek to receive: the hug that heals the broken pieces. Heavy lifting for a hug, I know, but how easily we can do that lifting.
There are many kinds of hugs and many ways to deliver them. There is the “full-body hug,” and the newly-developed “man-hug,” where two men clasp and simultaneously pound each other on the back; the side hug, an unconscious effort to avoid bringing sensitive body parts together; and the “upper-body only” hug, which occurs as its name implies. Despite the introduction of professionals, we amateurs may still be the best huggers, for once we learn to do so, the “quality of mercy is not strained” in the extension and acceptance of a hug.
No one likes to give up on a hug.