Holding Hands

Leave it to toddlers to take all the glamour out of one of life's simple pleasures: holding hands. Before Children (BC), holding hands was one of those simple pleasures, communicating affection between my husband and me. We had subtle variations on the theme, indicating all sorts of things, like: "My love for you has untold depths", or "Lets get a pizza."

Now, that simple pleasure is all but gone, as my hand-holding partner is no longer a loving partner, but a small child (or two), who understand NONE of the nuances of cooperative hand-holding. Child-free folks look upon the hand holding mother-child pair with warmth, even (recalling long ago memories) with a touch of envy. Those of us with kids know better.

I hold my children's hands only occasionally out of affection or purposes of bonding . Mostly it's a safety issue, plain and simple: because if I didn't, they would be dashing in front of cars for the express purpose of being flattened.  They would pull down grocery displays, find the "vitamin" section and deftly remove all the child-proof lids, and tree themselves on light poles. I would imagine.

So, holding hands isn't an option. It's critical to their survival, even at the expense of your sanity and ligaments. The best way I can think to describe this to innocent child-free readers is: imagine holding the leash of an untrained golden retriever, say 10 months old, in the middle of a squirrel sanctuary. Now imagine having a leashed tabby on the other. Just for fun, transport yourself (same leash configuration) to a public mall with impressive Christmas displays obstructing the aisles.

Grocery stores are getting wise to this, and are offering (in place of those miniature shopping carts - worst idea since the dawn of civilization) aircraft-carrier-sized carts with child restraint straps rivaling those found in F-16 fighter jets. This leaves mothers' hands FREE to purchase more boxes of sugared cereal and "fruit snacks" - which contain exactly 3 molecules of fruit, each - so that our beloved children can walk on the ceiling at home, thus saving wear-and-tear on the carpet.

Toddlers, in their egocentric little worlds, consider hand-holding as "possession". They believe that they have control. And they're pretty much right, because even though they weigh a lot less than us, Einstein showed that ENERGY counts as mass, too. This is why sometimes I'm pretty much hanging on to a Sherman Tank. A screaming Sherman Tank.  And God forbid I let go for a second - to adjust a purse strap threatening to amputate at the elbow. This is commonly interpreted as a clear signal to RUN.

Toddlers also believe that it is their God-given right, or duty, to *yank. Which can be very dangerous to one's skeletal structure. Trust me on this one, you don't have to be in a car wreck to experience whiplash. My son (this is true) actually dislocated his elbow, yanking. I'd have felt terribly guilty if it had been my hand he'd been tugging at the time. It was actually a door knob. But the posture was identical.

Holding hands is a little like dancing. There should be a leader, and a follower. This is the theory, anyhow. "Steering" my son ahead is consistently (if erroneously) interpreted as "What's up there? Is it scary? *I'm not going first!" Steering my daughter behind: "Why am I last again? I want to see what's up there! Me first! Me first!" Whereupon, I end up wrapped in a pretzel, my daughter having darted between my legs, my son cowering behind, and me looking ridiculous, but too smart to let go (see above: signal to RUN).

So the next time you're inclined to think "Awwwww! Isn't that darling!" Say a little prayer for Mom instead. Because in the rare instances she makes it look easy, either Jupiter has aligned with Mars, or there is super glue involved.