I live in St. Michaels.
Weekends, here, can be a zoo.
One day, while driving through
St Michaels with my wife, Jo, I saw crowds of people swarming over the
sidewalks, spilling into the streets like lava, heedless of the designated
crossover lanes, wandering from one side of the street to the other, grinding
traffic to a halt. “Alien invasion,” I grumbled. My wife, however, mused
casually, “It’s fun to see people holding hands.”
I’d never noticed. People
everywhere, young and old, were holding hands. I saw a side of St. Michaels I’d not noticed before. I thought only young lovers
or parents with children held hands. Not so in St. Michaels. Aging people,
their silver gray heads glistening in the mid day sun, wearing shorts and tee
shirts, carrying shopping bags, walking lazily from one shop window to another,
were enjoying St. Michaels . . . and each other.
In our world where “abuse” is
common, sadly, the word “touching” has earned a sinister connotation. But we
need touching to express affection and to feel reassured. We know that when
nurses touch a patient, blood pressure frequently lowers and the patient feels
safer.
Tiffany Field, director of
the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami observes, "Based on what we’ve seen, when we
get more physical intimacy, we get better relationships.” Stephanie Rosenbloom,
writing for the New York Times has
investigated hand holding among college students and writes: “ . . . there
seemed to be two universal truths: that hand holding is the least nauseating
public display of affection and that holding hands has become more significant
than other seemingly deeper expressions of love and romance.” One student allowed,
“It’s a lot more intimate to hold hands nowadays than to kiss.”
Like the art of love, holding
hands requires certain skills to be mutually satisfying. In the case of my wife
and me it means, literally, managing the long and short of it. Jo has longer
legs than I have and stands a hair taller. I have a long torso but short legs.
As hands hang at our sides, they don’t meet naturally. To complicate matters,
she prefers holding hands with her knuckles facing forward. So do I. To make
holding hands work for both, we trade off. She may lead off with her own hand
holding inclination and shortly after, defer to mine. This respects preferences
while mutually regulating differences. Regulating differences is one of humanity’s
greatest challenges. In fact, our survival as a species will ultimately depend
on it. A light touch helps.
With so much hatred and
violence today, we hunger for signs of hope. I propose a show of hands to applaud the
gentleness of spirit that the town of St. Michaels inspires in its visitors,
and yes, has also awakened in one of its more grouchy residents.
