All right. I’m about to open a can of worms. Here goes:

I mentioned before that not everyone is comfortable with the affection my father and I shower on eachother. In fact, it really freaks some people out. It has been the subject of some hot debates.

The idea that there might be anything weird about it comes as such a shock to me that I feel like the Twilight Zone lady in the pig-nose world. It seems the most natural thing in the world that after all these years of being apart my father and I would want to hug and kiss eachother to death. I never got to feel what that was like as a child, never got to sit on his lap and be cuddled and sung to sleep by my father (my dad Neil was neither the cuddling nor the singing type).  If I were five, no one would think twice about it, but I am painfully aware that no one sees me now as a child when my father kisses me, even if that is how I feel. I am in agony to think that we cannot make up for the lost affection.

I have been surveying a number of trusted friends and family members on this subject. Unfortunately, this has not helped. It turns out that, while just about everyone has a strong opinion on it, their opinions are completely subjective and contradictory. There are those who have made dogmatic rules about what is appropriate and what is not, and then there are those who agree that these gray areas must be left to my conscience.

“It is Ok to kiss and hug when you say hello and goodbye,” one said, “but not in-between.”

Does this also apply to other relationships as well, like the recent time I crossed the room to kiss my grandfather on the cheek just because I felt like it?

“Parents should not hold hands with their grown children of the opposite sex,” said another.

Who makes up this stuff? I am exasperated by this uptight Puritan thinking. My own mother holds hands with my brother, when she can get her hands on him.

My Latin friends constantly struggle with our American frigidity. One of my friends from Mexico actually got accused of sexual harrassment at work for what she considered a friendly greeting. My Brazillian friend is accustomed to holding hands with anyone of any age. If you sit next to her for any length of time, prepare to be caressed.  When I was at a convention in Chile, people lined up to kiss me hello, not a few of whom were teenage boys. I didn’t hate it, I’ll admit!

Time magazine did a series on happiness a few years ago. One of the studies showed that the happiest people in the world are Hispanics. Could there be a connection between affection and happiness? I do not think it a stretch to say yes. After all, babies die without it.

I realize that I must take the feelings of others into consideration rather than simply insist on my own. But I ask that others do the same. There is more than one way of looking at this situation. It will take time for others to feel as comfortable with our relationship as we do. Whether that will take six months or six years, I don’t know. In the meantime, I will be tiptoeing around these landmines, praying nobody loses a limb.

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