Getting physical

Last week I was walking down Madison Avenue with my son, story after story tumbling out of him, holding his hand to make sure he wasn’t swept away by the lunch time crowds. As we passed some thuggish youths slouching against a building, one of them said, “I wish my mother would hold my hand. Cherish it, young man”. It was unexpected and touching. The child wouldn’t let go of me for the next hour as we darted through human traffic.

Vitaly Arutyunov, Mother consoling son after losing the race, 1975

It made me think of how different attitudes to physical touch and closeness are in different cultures. When I first moved here with a five-year-old, I’d observe mothers and children on the playground. Local kids would trip and fall on their face, wailing and screaming, and mothers would stand over them saying what a shame and that must hurt, but let’s get up. This was so foreign to me, coming from a culture where the first instinct is to swoop down like a bird of prey, wrapping the offspring in your wingspan, consoling and kissing away. I understand the notion behind these differences, the drive to build autonomy and resilience, but my nature rebels against it. Not in a crying five-year-old - that is my little chick, still soft with baby fuzz. I can’t send the same chick back to his own bed if he’s had a nightmare and waddles over, puffy cheeks tear stained and crumpled. It’s such a brief window of time when you can ease all fears and troubles with a cuddle, to deny this simple peace seems sadistic.

During a parents’ meeting before starting kindergarten, one of the PTA moms was on a roll about how “once they start school, they will refuse to hold your hand”. She went on about how embarrassed and disgusted the children would be by this. Everyone laughed and nodded. I thought this was sad, given these were five years olds, but quickly forgot about it. When the youth on Madison commented on the hand holding, I realized how many years had passed and it made me happy that there are different trajectories. I was grateful that we’d imprinted on our boy that tenderness is not weakness, given him some extent of immunity to social pressures.

Dima Zverev, Metro station Prospekt Mira, 2021

Dwelling on the hand-holding and physical affection made me think about how much these behaviors vary across cultures and how intensely we are socialized into them from birth. In Meaning, Life and Culture: In conversation with Anna Wierzbicka, a book dedicated to the eponymous influential linguist, a colleague of hers writes:

“The chapter has shown that the prime Anglo values that impact communicative style—personal autonomy, privacy, independence—are based on keeping distance. They encourage speakers to keep their distance physically, psychologically and verbally. Dominant Russian values— involvement, solidarity, interdependence—in contrast, are based on closeness and make people more available. As a result, the representatives of these cultures have different understandings of politeness and appropriate modes of interaction (for details see Larina 2009, 2015). Anglo politeness (at least a part of it, called Negative politeness) (Brown and Levinson 1987) is distance-oriented. One needs to have a ‘sense of privacy’, not to intrude on another person’s zone of autonomy and demonstrate respect for it. Russian speakers, who prefer closeness to distance, instead of ‘sense of privacy’ possess a ‘sense of elbow’¹ (chuvstvo loktia); they are less vigilant in guarding personal autonomy and tend to express their communicative intention in a more direct way, which in many cases does not interfere with politeness. The general closeness of interpersonal relations, in the Russian context, guards against this possibility.”

This made me think of the “Not a space between us!” in Spanglish that was an arrow to the heart when I watched it many years ago.

Being tactile with people I love might be a personal rather than national trait, though, as a collectivist culture Russians do hug and kiss more than Anglo-Saxons. Greeting someone with a hug is a common. Women often kiss each other on the cheek to say hello. People stand closer to each other when talking and are touchier in general. The sense of distance between people is often small or absent altogether, sometimes maddeningly so, as can be witnessed in tangled post-Soviet queues that defy order and logic. In fact, distance is perceived as indifference or even hostility, rather than a positive thing celebrating private space.

At the same time, people don’t shy away from touch and hugs aren’t awkward, with butts sticking out to avoid full contact. No, it’s slam right in, mesh into one, smell all the smells and feel all the lumps. There isn’t much self-consciousness or fear about hugging and physical contact.

For me, physical closeness is inseparable from emotional closeness – only a friend would sling their legs over your lap, or fix your makeup, or grab you to punctuate a point in a story they’re telling. It’s part of my most sacred, cherished relationships – stroking hair, holding a hand. It’s a language in itself, to come and sit next to a loved one and put your head on their shoulder.

I notice there are fewer displays of public affection here. I used to love riding the long escalators in the metro, because they would always showcase the best things about being human. Teenage kisses teetering on pornographic, her hands in his jeans’ pockets. Dressed up couples shyly holding hands for the first time, concentratedly gazing into each other’s eyes, her freshly manicured nails clutching a bouquet. Children bouncing up and down in anticipation as grandma tuts and tries to pull a hat on them, scolding them with evident pride and a glowing sense of mission. Men joking about something and slapping each other on the back with tipsy, contagious comradery.

Gennady Bodrov, Friends (The Labourers), 1983

"The feeling of my mother's hand resting on mine was the only thing that made me feel at home. Nothing else, not even the most beautiful things I had ever known, could bring that same sense of comfort."

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, 1913

While the household remains reliably touchy, the outside world sometimes feels sensorily deprived. Different cultures might have their own rules about when and how to show affection, but at the end of the day, we all need that simple reassurance that we’re not alone.

A close relationship without physical contact lacks an essential dimension of being present in each other’s reality. There are people in my life I long to grab and hold close and can’t because oceans and maddening circumstances stand in the way. In the meantime, I’ve made plans to see a friend I haven’t seen in months and will bear hug her prickly Irish self in the most unapologetic way.

1. The sense of elbow refers to a feeling of mutual support, standing side by side with someone who will help you should you falter.