Handholding? Honey, Just Tell Me How Many Hands You Got Free

Quite the nasty little expression, ain’t it?  Mocking that primal need for skin-to-skin support even if there’s no actual skin involved.

You bet I’ve always appreciated handholding through any rough stuff I’d still have to actually survive by myself.  And I’ve been lucky.  I got it when needed.

The anesthesiologist walked into the room with a great big horrifying epidural needle and hold my hand! I demanded of my obstetrician and he did.  This was after hours of labor when the nurses would periodically ask me why I wasn’t screaming like everyone else up and down the hallway.  They’d check the monitor and tell me I sure was having hard contractions and believe me I was feeling them.  But, see, they were just hard, not scary.  We’ve all had awful bend-over-in-agony gas pains, haven’t we, and endured them on our own?  Needles, though—I really don’t like them.

When I had my forehead sewn up after a Looney Tunes sort of mishap at home, I demanded one of the medical professionals in the room hold my hand.  When I had my broken wrist reducted—and that word is some miserable bare-bones description of a horrible procedure—I demanded my son hold my hand.  The poor kid was lucky not to get any of his bones crushed while I was hanging on to him like that.  I’ve got some hearty grip for a not-so-big lady.

But sometimes grownups have to get through things unsuitable for the emotional involvement of their kids or other loved ones, even if they’re all grownups too.  You really know the quality of your friends when you can send them three-mile-long emails every day which pretty much repeat the same things over and over and yet your friends keep coming back for more.

It's on our own legs we have to traverse terrible roads we might have no choice but to take.  The people on each side of us, holding our hands, make sure we get through.  We have the right to ask them.