Holding Hands

When my children were small it was routine to hold hands. Traffic, crowds, darkness, deep water, any excuse served; what mattered was holding hands. Sometimes they didn’t want to, which was OK, it was their choice, they who gave the signal. Of that hand coming up in midair, reaching for the touch of reassurance and the knowingness that adults are supposed to possess. I remember that good moment, the holding-hands moment of parenting. To be wanted so emphatically, the signal of that hand rising up, wanting to be held. Perhaps the word here is shared, the hand shared more than it was held. For my part it was more hold than share.

We soon enough outgrow this business of holding hands. Parents know this, lovers know this. At some point the transition comes, like as not it catches us unawares. The marker approaches when hands were always held before, like crossing traffic, and suddenly our heretofore companion is independent. Nothing suffers instantaneous death like holding hands, that silly business now old hat, in fact a mark of the infant. I remember that instant, at least what it felt like; the pleasure at their growth and progress. Secretly regretting the loss of this bond, yet knowing, as a parent must, this must come to pass if the child is to grow their own dimension.

My observation is women hold hands more than men, and more eagerly. If I wish to put the move on my wife, flowers are not required, neither chocolate samplers, bath beads nor one of those disgustingly mushy cards. I am not blaspheming these tactics, rather bearing witness they are second options, if perhaps suspiciously desperate. OK, I admit, they cost money. I have never understood why a bag of peanut clusters from the checkout lane of Fleet Farm doesn’t qualify as the same romantic response. While the neatly boxed assortment with the fold-out doilies and embossed tissue does count, as romantic. At, I will hastily note, three times the price of a Fleet Farm bag of peanut clusters. Beside there are more clusters in the bag than in the romantic box that has mystery flavors including chocolate covered bag balm, horse lineament, if the more subtle rubber cement, all chocolate covered. It is entirely obvious these confections were never intended to be consumed, just looked at, the same reason the communion wafer is rarely used in a sandwich.

The shortcut to all this is to hold hands. Contrary to anatomy texts I contend the principal erogenous zone of the female is somewhere in their hand. If it’s the quickening of the tempo you are after, go for their hands. Something in the female begins to purr when a big piece of real estate with dirty fingernails and fresh scars comes to pay homage. I am led to believe the real animal of us is in our hands and the rest of us is a mere appendage, not the other way around.

Guys…men…dudes…grunts…boys…rarely hold hands. Women do. If my wife is talking intently to a friend or our daughter she will like as not also hold their hand. When she greets someone in a hospital room, she will soon after be hand-in-hand. I doubt if she is even aware she is holding hands.

As said, guys don’t. With a few exceptions. My favorite is football players, behemoth-type guys seen full-front on television holding hands while the wimpy field goal kicker does his pathetic ballet before the improbable distance to the goal post. I have seen this on Monday Night Football, guys holding hands. But that is about it for guys, at least until…fossilization, I mean old age. Then and only then is it OK for guys to hold hands. About the moment the average red-blooded guy discovers the implicit comforts of the rocking chair and doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether anything is manly or not, they revert to the pleasure of holding hands. I can now admit here, one of the great moments in life is to hold an old man’s hand. My grandfather had a hand that went two places at the same time, at least it tried. It was a hand that had cleared new land with an axe and an ox, hewed logs, milked by hand, shoveled his way to town, birthed his own son. When I was a kid I loved it when he put that broken claw on mine as if all wisdom in the world could flow through what was left of it and inflated me to my own manhood. Old men are not offended by holding hands and in the end arrive at the same perversion females have maintained all along. Of holding hands as a form of latent energy that words or conversation cannot transmit.

My bachelor uncle Curtis was dying in the west room of the farmhouse. It was an evening in spring, I remember how he put out his hand. Of holding it as it went steadily cold until whatever was gripping me was no longer there. The soul according to lore weighs 21 grams. This can be expressed in foot-pounds. The last tangible grasp in the person is 0.0033 foot ounce (calibration approximate), and then nothing. Uncle Curtis at his dying could not speak but his hands could. His brain was out of reach, the hands kept their vigil until they too departed.

Ever notice how in the cases of resuscitation emergency personnel stroke the victim’s hand? This accords with my theory of our species as a mere appendage, the real creature is our hands. Women already know this, as do football guys and those who hurt. Some day we all will know this. When the average hunk begins to hold hands they know they are officially old. A prediction no man wants to hear, that they will some day hold hands. The only alternative is to never stop holding hands in the first place.

Justin Isherwood is an award-winning writer, a Wisconsin farmer, humorist, author and contributor to numerous collections and publications including: Badger CommonTater, Isthmus, and Newsday. He is an essayist for the radio program, BookMarks & Art, airing on a CBS affiliate in central Wisconsin. His books include: Christmas Stones & the Story Chair, Book of Plough, and most recently, Farm Kid.