Please don't squeeze me. I only like hugging people I love.

I recently watched a movie called "Please Stand By" about a young autistic woman who doesn't like eye contact or hugs. And while her caretaker gently forces her to practice maintaining eye contact, she doesn't force hugs. Instead, the pair greet with an air hug, facing each other with their arms wrapped around an imaginary person as their fingers slightly touch.

That was cool.

I'm not sure where I am on the "autism spectrum," but I do know I don't like hugging most people. Only loved ones.
And while I don't want to start air hugging instead, I have tried to start a gentle fist bump for more casual interactions. Say, friends I see often and like very much, but don't want to hug every time I see them.
However, when my husband (only half-jokingly) asked if we could stopping hugging, I told him no, explaining with a modified quote from the movie Sweet Home Alabama, "I married you so I can hug you any time I want to."
For the rest of us, I propose we all greet one another how a teacher I saw in a video greets her kindergartners: as they walk in the door they each pick a hug, a high-five or a happy dance with no contact at all.
The code could be this: hold up one finger for a hug, two fingers for a high-five, and three fingers for a dance.
I'd always choose a dance, by the way. How could you not be smiling all day long if you greeted everyone with a happy dance?

Trihuger's Treats: Chapter One

Suzie was always telling Oliver what to do. So when he asked her how many berries they needed to pick and she didn’t answer him, he knew something was wrong.

“Um, Suzie? Did you hear me?” He peeked over the bushes in front of him, but she wasn’t there. So he headed back down the path along the blackberry bushes until he found her standing in front of one. “Suzie? How much does your dad wan—?”

        

He froze when the bush began shaking violently and out crawled a man. Or at least he hoped it was a man. He was covered in so many berry vines, leaves and smashed fruit he might have been part of the bushes – except he was talking. “Ooo uuu ath nny thuckers?” he said, berries tumbling out of his mouth and his entire face covered in deep red juice.

Neither kid moved nor made a sound. Suzie was too focused on trying to understand what the stranger was saying to do anything else. Oliver just wanted to keep her in front of him.

      

More agitated now, the man stepped forward and grabbed Suzie’s shoulders, his voice much louder and clearer since most of the berries had oozed down his face. “Do you have any zuckers!?”

     

“Any what?” Suzie said, still rooted to her spot even with the stranger’s hands squeezing her. If this was the last conversation she was going to have, she wanted to know what it had been about. 

      

Oliver inched closer to Suzie’s back, praying the man couldn’t see him moving.

     

“Zuckers! I need zuckers!” 

     

“What – what are zuckers?” Suzie said, feeling braver since she guessed if the man were going to hurt her, he would have already. 

     

The man let go of Suzie and sighed, wiping a hand across his face. Smelling the juice on his fingers, the man shoved them in his mouth greedily and took his eyes off Suzie. At that moment, she felt a tug on her shirt and her body moving back.

     

“Let’s go. Run!” said Oliver, taking off with her shirt clutched in his hand. As they dashed off, the man did not even look up from his fingers.

The children ran out of the bushes toward Suzie’s house as fast as they could, taking their shortcut through the strawberries that always made Suzie’s father mad. When they finally reached the house and burst inside, her father came out of the kitchen, seeing them doubled over and panting in the living room.

     

“What’s going on?” he said, holding a bowl he expected to fill with berries.

     

“A man attacked Suzie!” Oliver wheezed.

     

“What?!” Her father dropped the bowl on the dining room table as he hurried toward them, grabbing Suzie’s shoulders and lifting her upright. 

     

“What is that?!” he said, sounding almost as panicked as Oliver when he saw the red stains covering Suzie’s shirt.

     

“Oh – I’m fine. That’s just berries,” she said, wrapping her arms around her dad’s waist.

     

He patted her once, then pushed her backward. “What happened? Who was this man?”

     

Oliver sat down on the couch, lowering his head quickly toward his lap to make sure he hadn’t peed his pants. Seeing he was dry, he locked his knees together and wrapped his arms around them just in case.

     

“I don’t know,” Suzie was saying. “He wasn’t mean, I don’t think. He just really wanted something called a ‘zucker.’ He kept asking for zuckers.” 

     

“Oh. God. Oh, no,” her father said, turning away with his hand on his forehead.

    

“What? You know what he’s talking about?” said Suzie, shocked. 

      

Oliver looked up from his knees. Suzie waited impatiently.

 “Well,” her father said, sighing and sitting down on the coffee table, which he only did when very rattled. “Did I ever tell you about the other island?”

Chapter Two 

A recipe for happier holidays: Forgiving family members for not being how you want them to be.

One of the newer ornaments next to one missing her hat.

Growing up, my favorite Christmas ornaments were ones my mother had grown up with – little winged fairies that you could make float on the tree's branches. And when nearly all of those delicate ornaments fell apart, my sister made me new versions that I loved even more than the ones I grew up with.

That Was Cool.

Her gesture was especially meaningful because we had recently lost both of our parents, and were now decorating our own Christmas trees as young adults because our mother died when we were teenagers, then soon after her death, our father removed himself from our lives.

And while my sister and I had never been close, her thoughtful gift made me believe we could finally form that close bond I always wanted to have with her, especially now that she was the only immediate member I had left.

But we never got close. Instead, I spent the next 20 years chasing her affections, constantly examining every interaction for clues as to how I could make her love me like I wanted. Because I was certain that since I lost my mother and father so early, I had to then deserve a sister who loved me, right?

So I chased the fantasy of a devoted sister relentlessly until I finally had to decide that for my own sanity and happiness, I needed to accept that I would never get what I wanted. And instead of chasing someone who would never love me, I needed to give my time and love to the people who wanted to give their time and love to me.

Because love isn't given to us because we deserve it – it is just given, whether we deserve it or not. And everyone, even your family members, are never going to be exactly (or even partially) who you want them to be, they are only always going to be who they are.

And while relatives share your blood, they don't necessarily want to share your life. Often (and dare I say almost always?) the best families are the ones we create ourselves by finding people who love us because of who we are, not because we're related.

And, honestly, what’s cooler than someone being with you because that's where they decided to be, not because it's where they started out?

Of course, letting go of my sister was still one of the most difficult journeys I have ever embarked on, and is one I will likely never fully complete. But at least now I know I am finally making progress, because recently while decorating my tree, I realized I can finally look at those ornaments she made without being drowned by deep pain.

Now when I float those fairies on branches, I can remember how kind it was of my sister to make them for me, and simply appreciate that gesture without aching for anything more. And that feels very cool.

Super Cool Postscript: After this essay was recently published in the newspaper I work for, I began to feel embarrassed this week, fearing I had shared too much of myself. But then I got an email from a reader who said this:

"The tenderness with which you approach your feeling and hurts brought tears to my eyes. Your words of truth about how love is, or isn’t, resonates and really helps my poor heart. 

I am so grateful to you for writing this. I don’t feel quite so alone, and think that maybe there is a path for me out of the sadness that frequently consumes me."

These words made me feel that baring my soul was worth any embarrassment, and reminded me why writers feel compelled share our truths -- because at some point, we read the truth of others, and their words gave us strength.

Ukiah woman floats on stage as the Ghost of Christmas Past

Dell Linney as the Ghost of Christmas Past. (Photo by Chris Pugh)

We took my mother-in-law to see “A Christmas Carol” at the Ukiah Players Theatre, and all our trio wanted to talk about after the show was the woman playing the Ghost of Christmas Past, who looked like she was floating on stage as she kept her arms in constant motion.

That was cool.

Ukiah High graduate Dell Linney played the ghost, and said her flowing white outfit was designed to make her look like a floating candle, with her arms evoking its “smoky, flickering” flames. The plan worked, and I marveled at how long, and seemingly effortlessly, she kept moving her arms.

“I try to keep doing different motions,” said Linney, explaining that it is when you do the same movements over and over that your muscles really get tired. “The arm movement is something that I could always do, but I practiced to be able to maintain it for the play.”

Linney said she never timed the sequences she shows Scrooge from his past to see exactly how long she had to keep her arms in motion, but “we did rehearse over and over. And once it became normal to constantly be moving, I could put it on the back burner in my head and focus on the emotional delivery in the scenes.”

And it helps that "our Scrooge is so fun to act opposite and tease and patronize," she continued. She indeed had good chemistry with Chris Douthit's Scrooge, answering all of his increasingly frenetic energy with a stern calm that pokes and prods him until he admits the truth.

As for her flowing white outfit, Linney said her costume was imagined by director Jenny Peterman, who wanted "to create an interpretation as similar to the book as possible."

Another cool aspect Linney brought to the stage was a live turkey to stand in for the Christmas goose Scrooge has delivered to Bob Cratchit. 

“I bring him because he’s the most tame,” she said of the six-year-old Heritage turkey who plays Brother Turkey, explaining that her family raises the birds to sell as breeding pairs, not for meat.

But the turkey can’t be brought into the theater until his big reveal, because “he will ‘gobble’ when he gets startled, like when something loud happens on stage.”

Before she went on stage as the ghost, Linney said she hadn't really danced, “but the last few years (working with the theater) has helped me learn that I actually enjoy expressing something with physicality.”

My favorite iPhone function? “Block this Alcoholic.”

A mantra of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Someone with a drinking problem texted me once, likely hoping first for a sympathetic ear and next some money. After sending them a quick, “You need to stop drinking, don’t throw away your potential,” I blocked their number and all future communication.

That was cool.

That may sound cold to someone not raised at the mercy of an alcoholic, but I was, and I refuse to serve in anyone else’s war of addiction. I was drafted at birth, then only mercifully discharged two decades later when my father moved to another state.

 

Before that, my life was a bus route with only three stops: 1. he’s not drunk now but will be soon; 2. he’s drunk so avoid him; 3. he’s gone to bed so you can clean up all the messes, then try and get some sleep before you get back on the bus the next morning.

But even if your alcoholic moves away, you are never completely free from that bus if they can still drive it, and pull up to your door at any time. 

 

Like the Christmas morning I was spending with my friend when her father (yes, another drunk) showed up unannounced after driving across three states with his newest hungry children. 

 

They didn’t ask for food, but she knew they hadn’t eaten because he never fed her on drives like that, so we all sat down to a very uncomfortable breakfast that morning, proving there will never be a “Block this Contact” function that completely works on family.

 

But there is one on my phone now that works on other people. And man, that’s cool. Because while I can never protect younger me from the past, she does smile knowing I at least have the power to protect her now.

Marriage is like building with Legos. But don't follow the instructions on the box. Build something new.

When I met my husband, I felt like a misfit Lego piece that had finally clicked into place. Instead of twisting myself into shapes imagined by others, I found someone I could build something new with.

That was cool.

And while that first connection is crucial, how you build with your bricks afterward is even more important.
It’s best if you stay on equal footing, not one of you a brick and the other a big square of grass: then all of you is attached to them, but only a small part of their piece is attached to you, leaving plenty of grass for other bricks to click onto.
Just be careful of becoming too alike and attached. You don't want your borders to dissolve so much that you forget how to separate, never enjoying your own hobbies and friends. 
“I like doing things apart,” says my aunt of her 25-year-marriage. “When you’re together all the time, you have nothing to tell each other. All your stories are the same.”
Just don't spend so much energy on other interests that you can't reconnect: time apart should strengthen your bond, not weaken it.
But the most important thing to remember is that what you build with your bricks doesn't have to look like what anyone else created. In fact, it really shouldn't. Because it's your own.

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I found an antidote to fear: a permanent reminder to make the most of my time

Turning 41 was a big deal for me, since it was the age my mother was when she was killed in a car accident.
I thought for a long time about how I wanted to mark that milestone, and eventually decided to get a tattoo.
It's on my forearm, in a spot that's both easily hidden and easily seen every time I need a reminder. 
A reminder that every year, every day, I have now is one that my mother never had. And that I should make the most of every one I get from now on.
And this week when I wanted to celebrate my mother's birthday by exploring a new trail, that tattoo made sure I went. 
Because her accident also gave me a fear of driving, and that fear was trying to tell me not to go, that unnecessary drives are unnecessary risks.
But I looked at that tattoo and it told me to go. So the dog and I, we got in the car and drove to that new trail.

That was cool.

Even cooler? I know my mother would have been proud.



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