Episode 87: untouched // Wednesday, July 1

The first thing I ever published was a short piece of creative non-fiction called “Touched.”

I’ve been thinking about touch a lot lately. My 8-year-old son, who has never been affectionate, has lately declared himself too old for kisses. The other day I pulled a muscle trying to wrestle him into a hug.

The times we’ve gotten together with friends for social distance gatherings, it’s nice, but there’s an undercurrent of anxiety that didn’t used to be there. We pretend it’s normal to sit six feet apart. We don’t mention the meals we are no longer sharing, the embraces we keep to ourselves.

After talking over the fence for the past three months and weighing the statistics about kids and COVID, we finally decided to open our bubble to include the 7-year-old boy who lives next door. At first it was social distance playing, but after a few days that broke down. Our kids have been wrestling, reading to each other, rediscovering the friendship they’ve had since infancy, but that was dormant all of these months. Their joy at being together is palpable.

When I wrote “Touched,” I was in grad school. It was 2005. Reading it now is a bit like hearing myself recorded, realizing that’s what I sound like--or at least what I sounded like back then. But it was also interesting to hear in my words how I took touch for granted. How I assumed it would always be there.

I wrote the piece as a creative response to something we read in one of my classes--a piece I no longer remember, and cannot for the life of me find today. That sort of creative response was something we did a lot in grad school. You read something--often something that challenges you--and then you write something inspired by that work, like having a conversation, which is art at its best in all disciplines. Whether we’re painting or putting a pen to the page, we’re talking to someone or something, trying to understand where we fit into the great conversation.

So much has changed--in me, and in the world--since I wrote that piece. I found myself responding, wanting to rewrite things, wishing I could talk to my younger self. So I did.

I’d like to read you that original piece, and also the response today, to my younger self.

A quick warning that this first piece, the one I wrote fifteen years ago, mentions “that thing grownups do when they love each other.” Also, there’s a word of profanity that I’ve changed for this reading; you can find the original at shelterinplacepodcast.info.

This is called “Touched.”

I like art that reaches down my throat and squeezes my breath with commanding fingers. I like writing that makes my chest pound, my face flush. I like being nervous about what people will see when they read my work.

I like confidence like smooth, white eggshells. I am the girl who does not care what other people think, who will go on being because it is who I have become; I am also the girl who is so insecure that I imagine people discarding me like a dirty sock because of something I said.

I like the cool metal of a friendship that is like a reliable car. I will check the tires every other week and try to never let the gas get below a quarter of a tank. I'm willing to get messy and change the oil myself if I know that it won't break down on me when I'm halfway to Tahoe with no stations in sight.

I like the salty dew of exhaustion on my skin. I like running until my breath is sweet and my legs are floating and I finally feel how I wish I looked. When I was eighteen, I ran faster than everybody else I knew, and had clanging medals lining the wall above my desk. My body was wiry, strong, and impervious to injury. I spent afternoons eating generic Lucky Charms and reading newspaper articles predicting my win. The day came, raging with rain and hail storms, and something thundered in my body, cracked open. No one is ever impressed with second place.

I like the chisel of disappointment that forces me to keep recreating myself. I like knowing that something so important to me will mean nothing to most everyone else.

I like starting fresh.

I like the white heat of stage lights. A solo I once recorded won a national award that meant something to me but was forgotten by everyone else within days. Now I play guitar badly just so I can sing along. In another life I'd be a screaming blues singer who could burn up a fretboard like Stevie Ray Vaughan.

I like cities that are underrated, that surprise me with their quiet caress. I prefer Oakland to San Francisco, Minneapolis to Chicago. I like knowing the secrets that are still being kept.

I like the kind of truth that breaks skin, but not bone. I am not thick-skinned – but then, is anybody?

I like feeling life completely, even if it means enduring pain that threatens to tear vital organs and splinter teeth. I like to think that being able to hurt that deeply means I can love that deeply too.

I like the almost-sticky texture of lipstick that is just a little bold, that keeps me rubbing my lips together. I like being the girl who dances in heels. I like the danger of falling. I like knowing that I am being watched, but I'm the happiest when the one who is watching is already mine.

I like being one of the girls, but I also like being one of the guys. I like pizza and beer and yelling at the opposing team. I like getting my heart broken over a ball game.

I like the uncooked texture of being real, but I also hate it. Real love, the kind that won't walk away when you're detestable, requires squeezing fingers through emotions like ground meat. I hate being open and then having my soul scraped raw by disregard. Still, I do it every time.

I like bodies hovering, dripping sweat, refusing surrender just a moment longer than I can stand it. I like the kind of sex that makes me think of prayer. I like feeling poured out, washed clean, touched by more than fingers, kissed by spirit. I like knowing that someone is there.

--
The piece I wrote today, the response to the thing I wrote fifteen years ago, is called “Untouched.”

I like looking back on life and seeing the person I was, and the person I have become.

I like breaking free of the form.

I spent so much of my life pretending, crying out with every breath, look at me! I hoped by declaring myself transparent, no one would see through me.

I wanted desperately to matter, to be something extraordinary--though I couldn’t say just what. I imagined myself a decorative figurine, the kind you buy on impulse when you’re on vacation somewhere, justifying the purchase for the sake of beauty. I mistook my rigidity for strength. I didn’t know the way life could knock you over in one fell swoop, with no regard for the shards of glass on the floor.

These days I don’t try to put the pieces back together. I keep them in a clay jar my friend formed on her potter’s wheel, where they can sparkle like the diamonds they dreamed of being. I love the muted brown and beige of the glaze, the way my thumb catches on a place that is not quite smooth. I have no use for fragile figurines.

Some days I look at my husband and three children and think, who are you? How have we failed each other yet again today? Anger splatters on the walls like a toddler’s attempt at eating. What I feel most in these moments is fatigue, an enduring tiredness that cannot be fixed by bourbon or TV or even sleep, though those things sometimes help for a little while.

I don’t wish for death. My list of gratitude is long. What I want is for time to stop, for all of my obligations to freeze, for no one to need me for a little while. I want the dust to settle. I want an existence where I don’t have to think about paying bills or getting organized or attaining the elusive inbox zero. I want my children to speak kindly and play nicely, for everyone in my life to understand. I want to lay untouched in our backyard hammock, smelling oranges and lemons, gazing up at the wide blue sky, dreaming of a life I long for but can’t yet define.

Sometimes I come close. I like Sunday afternoons when my daughter climbs into the hammock with me and rests her head on my chest while we read. I like the horsey smell of my boy when he’s freshly showered, the rare moments when he decides I am deserving of his kisses. I like evenings on the back porch, when we open a bottle of wine and give ourselves permission to dream that life will be easy.

Easy is not the goal. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting it.

I like imagining a life where we could work four days instead of six. A life where our children get along--where we get along, too. I like thinking about steak dinners and Castaveltrano olives and wine from the Loire. I like ignoring, for just a moment, that pleasure costs something.

I like envisioning restored coral reefs. Whole cities of people who sleep well. A world where there is enough to go around, and excess becomes generosity.

I like claiming contradiction as paradox, difference as harmony. I like believing that all of that broken glass could do more than sit in a clay pot. I like making the mosaic, putting in piece by piece, trying not to cut myself.

I used to see Amalia every now and then on special occasions--for a birthday massage, a treat for our anniversary. When she touched me, it felt like she was forming the clay of me, smoothing out the rough spots, pressing into the source of my pain with a touch that was firm, but kind.

I miss the hugs. The concerts and church services. I miss dancing close to strangers. But most of all I miss having someone touch me with the sole intention of bringing me back to health. It’s a touch I never get tired of, one I wish I could find every day. It’s so rare in life, to have someone see the parts of you that are all wrong--the knotty muscle in the hallow beneath your shoulder blade, the scar tissue in your ankle--the places where our body remembers all of the ways we’ve been hurt, all of the fractures and falls.

To have someone see all of that and say it’s all right. You’re here. We can make this better--we, as if you are doing anything but lying on the table. What a gift that kind of touch is. It’s the gift of a good friendship. The gift of presence when the world is all pain. The gift of grace.

I like imagining a world where we can offer each other what Amalia offered to me. Not just accepting each other’s injuries, but taking pleasure in healing them.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. I once heard Ta-Nehisi Coates say in front of a crowd of strangers that he does not agree. Some days I agree with one, some days the other.

I like remembering what I often forget, that MLK had faith in something bigger than history. A faith that said, it’s all right. I see these wounds, but you’re here. We can make this better.

I like turning off the radio, and the computer, and the phone. I like thinking about grace, about how even as I am untouched by human hands, grace works its fingers into the places I can’t reach. It hurts, but it’s also a relief. I like remembering that it is changing me, healing me day after day, even though I keep breaking.


Before I go, I want to thank some of our newest supporters of Shelter in Place.

Kaitlin Solimine, thank you for saying yes to lunch with a total stranger, and for becoming an encouraging friend and fellow writer who gets it. I’m rooting for you and your writing each step of the way.

Ben & Bethany Corrie, your generosity, hospitality, and friendship make you feel close. The hours spent practicing Spanish and cleaning the soot off our ceilings have taught us what it looks like to live a life built on grace.

Jake & Jen Armerding, thank you for sticking with us through the painful parts of life. Denver, you’ve been a faithful friend through a lot of hard seasons, starting with that swinging bed. Your dedication to your family and to this earth remind me to keep fighting the good fight. Jake, I owe you so much, starting with your music. Your songs have been the soundtrack to life for a long time, and are still part of the Saturday morning playlist. Sorry, not sorry, for watching the Wedding Singer without you and stealing your best friend. Thank you for being a true friend through it all.