To Hug or Not to Hug

To hug or not to hug: that is MY question.

I come from Italian roots, prolific & notorious huggers. I stand aside from that crowd, kind of pushing my hand out to ward off a hug. Of course, there are some times, places, people, where a hug is organic. Those hugs I like. I distinctly remember this behavior as a child. I hung behind chairs, moving backwards out of reach or behind someone. I was a sylph of a girl, easily lost, a blade of grass. No hugs come to my mind from my Mother. Mothers teach us even when they are no longer here. What was I learning? Is the lesson even [ever] over? Nah. Not when it involves a Mom.

Where did this culture of hugging come from? It is,
as I say, not my era. Except when bicycling past the bus depot &
occasionally under the boardwalk, I did not see hugging. A man with a sign
& a smile saying, “Free Hugs!!*!” would likely have been hustled to the
bony corners of Anglesea to rejoin the mainland. Or into the sea itself just
beyond. Did I learn a kind of isolation from the island? From the gulls who seemed to have it down pat to openly be equal with every other beak in the flock at the exact same moment? To this day, I react viscerally to every gull cry I hear. Did I learn it from books? Yes, indeed. These were, after all, the only reality I had. My refuge & true Sanctuary is the library, still. My first Impression of a Store is not some Bamberger’s but the stationery store. I would open the door, dashed by the air conditioning & the door’s weight both at once, I would pause, once inside before turning to the paper, or trying one or two pens on those 1” square pads stuck into the display. I would wander the tablet aisle hungrily, study the felt-tip pens avidly. I am still of that appetite & tho I actively resist purchase now, I compulsively check the prices on any group of copybooks or journals. Certainly, there were no hugs there – just glancing eyes behind the glass counters.

The entire wander & wanderlust offered cool respite to a sunburn & a legitimate reason to come in off the beach. It was also ’specially grand on days when the beach would dash up against the sky in windy gusts & the clouds crowd over.

Always, then to the soda store for a Vanilla Coke & a bag of chips.

Only if Teri was in town were there hugs for me.