Authority of Touch

Last night I got home from dinner with friends just in time to put the little angel to bed.  Well...she was already in bed, but I kicked my XM-radio-listening husband out of her room and sat down next to her.  She was so excited that I was home that it then took a while to get her calmed back down, so I picked her up and went to the rocking chair for a while. 

As we were rocking, her little hand snuck back around my waist and started playing with the edge of my sweater, which had fringe on it.  I felt her touch on the skin of my back.  It felt like nothing else.  The touch of a child's hand on the mother has an authority over almost any other touch.  When do we lose that confidence about our right to lovingly touch our mothers and fathers?  What adult would simply reach up under their mother's sweater to pat her lower back?  But children do - at least small children, toddlers, babies.  They will stick their fingers up our noses, but they also bury their faces in our necks with such certainty it inspires us mothers to prepare to run through fire to protect them, to justify their belief that we can prevent all harm.

I still hug my mother, as often as she wants me to, but I can't remember the last time I stuck my nose in her neck or lay down next to her on the couch.  Somewhere around tweendom, we pull back from touching - our fingers grow tentative.  Mothers begin to ask permission to hug or touch their children's hair.  Children, in their growing independence, have no idea how great a loss their hugs really are until they, too, become mothers holding their toddlers in a rocking chair and wondering how long it will be before those little fingers no longer reach out with such authority.