Cherish Your Hugs

By Lauren Lake

It started as disbelief. Quarantine? In 2020? 

It began with a mad dash for toilet paper, paper towels and anti-bacterial wipes. I remember talking with my best friend who wisely advised me to stock up on over the counter medicines and shelf stable almond milk for my kids in case we couldn’t get out. My pantry was canned beans for days, and we even considered filling everything we could think of with water in case the apocalypse was real and water treatment plants collapsed. Stocking the shelves was one aspect of the pandemic that we tried our best to be prepared for. After six months, I can say it was the easiest part. 

My in-laws live ten minutes away. My husband’s sister and her family of four are also ten minutes away. My parents are a little farther at 45 minutes across down, and my sister and her three children are 25 minutes. My younger brother, the farthest distance from the rest of us, is only a two hour road trip to Michigan. This is all by design. I live the truth behind the adage “it takes a village to raise a child” because this is my ever-present village. Or it was until March of 2020. 

With the unknown threat of COVID looming over all of us, the family took social distancing very seriously. We used only facetime and other instant messaging apps to communicate with grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. As the weeks started to pass, we ventured out and had social distance happy hours on the lawn with my in-laws. They brought their own chairs, their own beers, and wouldn’t come into our home to use the bathroom. 

All of that has been tolerable. The initial and unexpected hardship was the absence of hugging. No greeting each other with a peck on the cheek. No squealing grandchildren allowed to run and jump into their grandparents’ arms. We had to explain to our nine, seven, and three year-old that it wasn’t safe to hug their grandparents or stand too close. While I’m not sure my kids understood completely, they accepted it and enjoyed their visits. 

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Birthdays have come and gone. My parents celebrated my daughter’s birthday with a cautiously delivered box of donuts accompanied by a wave and a kiss blown from the driveway. It was almost silly to my little girl, and she thanked her Mae Mae and Papa and enjoyed her sweet treat. Later that afternoon, her other grandparents delivered a sign for the yard – a big, number eight – as a special surprise. Tears were shed as their car pulled out of my driveway – by my mother-in-law. 

The days passed like this. As have the weeks and months. 

A few months into the pandemic, when more was known about the virus and we all felt a little safer having been in our cocoons for a while, we decided to gather on the driveway at my sister-in-law’s house for a socially distanced cookout. 

We spent a nice afternoon outside with my in-law family. The cousins played for the first time in months, and it felt like the “good ol’ days”. As we wrapped up our visit that evening, I remember my sister-in-law showing off her beautiful dahlias. And, as it often did, our conversation turned to the craziness of the time and how hard it had been to not hug each other and, “can you believe this is still going on?” 

It was during this conversation that my mother-in-law admitted she hugged my niece and nephew earlier that day. Almost as though it was a forbidden secret. Of course my kids overheard this and looked at me with questioning eyes: could they, too, maybe give their grandma a hug? 

At that moment I looked at my husband to be sure we were on the same page, and I turned to give a subtle nod of ok to my mother-in-law. She gingerly wrapped one arm around my oldest son first and tears trickled down her cheeks. I never questioned how much she loved us, but I also never thought about how hard it would be for her to be kept at bay from all of us. How hard it would be for any of us to be out of reach from each other.

More months have passed. Hands are still washed frequently. Masks are still worn. Hugs are given more cautiously – and each one is cherished in a way it never would have been before the great pandemic of 2020.

Lauren Lake is a project director and resides with her village in Ohio.

Photo by Ekaterina Shakharova on Unsplash