I watched a corny sci-fi movie on Netflix the other night: Mission to Mars. When the human protagonists meet the alien who is waiting to greet them (it’s so predictable that I didn’t bother to give you a spoiler alert) they all hold hands.
I wept.
OK, I’m a sucker for sentiment but I wept because it made me think what a fundamental and profoundly intimate gesture of connection it is to hold hands and, more immediately, how much I miss holding hands with Chris.
I say holding hands with Chris rather than holding Chris’s hand, because of the essential mutuality of the act. I was talking to a friend on the phone yesterday (she is also widowed) about what we miss most. There were many things.
“What about sex?” she asked.
“Yes, but even more than that,” I said. “I miss not being able to walk down the street holding hands, feeling completely connected.”
Chris and I had our own way of holding hands (I imagine every couple does). My right hand and her left hand came together in a way that I realise I cannot describe. It amused us that it had to be just so. Occasionally we’d tease each other by coming into dock (corny sci-fi again) with a digit misplaced. It would evoke a shriek of horrified laughter and the other would retract their hand, refusing to attempt to dock again until the whole hand was offered in the proper manner.
I’ve tried to reproduce the action in my mind but it’s as though the memory is carried in my hand. What’s more, the memory can only be activated by our hands actually coming together. In the absence of Chris’s hand, my hand doesn’t know what to do.
When the Beatles song came out in November 1963, I was just about to turn 14 and it was still 3 years before Chris would be born. Even so, I think they nailed it:
Oh yeah I’ll tell you something
I think you’ll understand
When I say that something
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand
Oh please say to me
You’ll let me be your man
And please say to me
You’ll let me hold your hand
Now let me hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand
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