In Gratitude for the Fifth Sense: Touch!

Today is THE day. While taste might have been more appropriate for the culinary creations found tis Holiday, I believe that touch is what we yearn for more than food. Certainly my day could never start without the ritual hugs that let my sweet husband and I breathe the same air at he same time. Touch. Hugs. Hands clasped. Doggy kisses…all of those tactile sensations which says someone or something reached out to us. Last week, while visiting  an assisted care facility, I found that  despite minds and bodies bent with onslaughts of age, their eyes lit up with gentle hugs, with a touch to their hand, or a kiss on the cheek. Touch is so vital that therapist and author Virginia Satir stated that human beings need four hugs a day for survival, eight hugs a day for maintenance and 12 hugs a day for growth.  I personally would double all those amounts. This is the first Thanksgiving without my Mom. I woke up thinking of all the ways she touched me. She cuddled me in bed when I had a nightmare, put a cool hand on my burning forehead, bandaged up scrapes and cut out ingrown toenails.  In the last year of her life, when a stroke paralyzed her entire left side, I would kneel beside her wheel chair, throw my arms around her waist and place my head in her lap. Her good hand would caress my hair and we’d be still in peaceful silence. I think I was touched by an angel.    And you???  Who touches you today?  Better still, whom will you touch?