i like warm hugs

I’m in the kitchen, getting ready to make dinner. It’s my least favorite thing. Cooking is not my passion. My teenage daughter, Gianna, is at the table, doing a school project. She’s trying to construct a roller coaster out of a matchbox car track, various pieces of cardboard, and tape. I can tell the project is not going her way by the tenseness of her shoulders and the look of exasperation that is forming on her face.

She’s a volcano on the verge of eruption.

As I begin to walk away to preheat the oven, she lets out a quiet scream of frustration and starts to cry. Angry tears are probably the worst kind of tears, because they piss you off when you were already pissed off to begin with. You’re not sad yet your eyes insist on leaking. 

Out of instinct, I go to hug her. Tears equal hugs to me. Plus, mother hugs are supposed to be magical after all. As I go to wrap my arms around her neck, she pulls away. She. pulls. away. Like she was on fire and I was a heaping bucket of ice.

We were making steam, and she wasn’t having it.

That feeling of having my child pull away from me was a quiet, yet firm shock to the system. My hugs have always been craved. They have been a source of comfort and relief, not something to recoil from. This moment in the kitchen when my daughter pushes me away reminded me that mother hugs aren’t magic. It reminded me that my daughter is not a child that fell down and hurt her knee. She’s a teenager after all. No teenagers want a hug when they are angry.

I let the moment go. I give her the space she wanted to simmer and regroup. After the eruption, we find a way to make the damn roller coaster work, and I find a way to yet again to not poison my family with that night’s meal.

The next morning as I am working at my desk, Gianna comes downstairs. She’s wrapped up in her brown and white paw print blanket. It’s the one our old dog Diego had when he died years ago. It’s her favorite. She’s wrapped up like a little burrito because she’s always cold in the morning, just like me.

In my chair, I turn to face her, and she cuddles up on my lap, tucking her knees up, and lays her head on my shoulder, her face in my neck. Her weight is heavy on me, but I relax into it.

I just be.

In that moment, I remember in my mind how her head used to fit in the palm of my hand. How she used to need to hold my finger at night to fall asleep. How she would run and tackle me with her strong toddler body; hugging my neck with both arms. So strong but so small.

I sat there with my almost 15- year-old daughter in my lap and remembered how little she used to be. I miss those days. But, after that night of being pushed away, she reminded me that she still wants to be held by her momma. My hugs might not be magical. My hugs aren’t always needed. But my hugs are still needed. Even though we might be the same size now, Gianna reminds me in this moment that she is still, and always will be, my little girl.