misplaced mama

I read this post the other day, remembering a few other people who have done the same thing and each story I hear about it makes me both wonderfully warm and sad.  Sad because this is a question, that we need to be challenged to hug one another.  Would we hug someone just for a hug’s sake?  For love’s sake, even if that person was a stranger? With a sign?  Or not.

Damn right I would, was my immediate response.  Hell yeah, I’m Sicilian. We’d hug the UPS man if he didn’t run so quickly back to his truck after leaving the box at my door.  I hug the lady who works at the local grocery store who manages the kid toy section almost every time I see her, because she lets me, I sense her openness and she is just amazing and I adore her. And at the other market, the Co-Op, I hugged the man who sweetly swept and mopped the massive canning jar that was almost full of molasses (it was taking forever to fill; slower than molasses in January? They weren’t kidding. The jar was covered in the goo, as were my hands).  Somehow it slipped, I tried to catch it with my prodtruding belly, but alas, it dropped.  Crashed and splattered.  I just stood there and watched him clean it, the whole time apologizing for my sheer klutziness, blaming it on the pregnancy.  He smiled the whole time and assured me it was nothing.  When he was done, I smooshed into him with my huge belly, arms around his arms.  Thank you, I said to him.  Thank you for not making me feel bad.  I break everything these days.

There is nothing I love better than to embrace my friends, heart to heart, passing back and forth that much needed vital force of energy called Love.  And I have no problem embracing the stranger, too, especially if they have done something nice for me.

And today, my self-confidence in hugging anyone would be tested.

I walked into my local coffee place.  Grabbed a muffin and a chai.  As I was walking to a table, there was a middle aged-woman smiling at me, beaming from ear to ear.  She was sitting at a counter on a stool.  As I got closer her face lit up even more and it was easy to see she had severe Down’s Syndrome.  She was drooling and her smell was intense. Her eyes were imprinting my soul.  She stared me up and down.   I love you. She said to me stopping me in my tracks.  I planned to keep walking by her towards a table in the back.  Can I hug you? My first reaction, to my surprise was not of openness, but a body and sensory shut down for the quickest moment.  I retreated into my turtle shell,  protection mode for body and spirit. What do I do? Hug? Walk?  I breath. And immediately my body released. I put my cup and plate down on the counter.  I needed no protection.  I wrapped my arms around her scratchy wool sweater that quite honestly reeked of urine and gave her a big hug. Her arms were strong and her energy so vibrant I could feel it pulse right through to my heart.  She patted my belly. She looked me in the eyes. I love you.  I love you, She said to me again with a big, wide child-like smile. The woman she was sitting with, who was most likely her care-provider glanced at me and gave me a wink and then went back to reading her paper.

We love you too, I said, We love you, too.  She went back to eating her cookie.  I picked up my things and walked to a vacant table.  I sunk into my seat.  Saying the “we” before the “love you too” was so instinctual.  It was like I knew she saw me as me and the baby.  That would make a “we”.

I immediately thought of J’s link to the hugger.  After initial hesitation, I had to check myself and my self-proclaimed status as being open to affection from the greater world I am part of.  Sure, I’m a hugger, when I find you to be safe and relatively familiar and when I decide it’s you I want to hug.  But for the random stranger, who looks different, smells different, sounds different; who approaches me with open arms,  I had to think twice before extending my physical love.  Of course, I fell into the act within moments of the request, but it wasn’t my gut reaction to embrace. Once I did, I knew it was more than right; this pure and sweet woman who sensed my readiness to have a baby, probably knew I needed some love. 

And then I realized, it certainly wasn’t me who needed to extend my love to her.  It was her who gifted me with her unconscious desire to open up to the powerful force of love and touch.  It seemed primal and immediate to her.  She didn’t think about it, she felt it and she acted upon it without a thought.  With me, I had to stop, think, and then surrender that part of me, the part that should just know to love.

Back to understanding that I have a lot of work to do.  That I know nothing.  I believe nothing. Absolutely nothing.  But that’s okay.  It just means I constantly learn.