“The heart is the toughest part of the body,” wrote Carolyn Forché. “Tenderness is in the hands.” Throughout literature, poetry, and lyrics we find endless reflection on the inherent intimacy of holding hands. To put your hand in someone else’s is to eliminate all other possibility of movement, saying that there is nothing else you want to be doing, that what you want is to be held and for them to hold you back. It is a freeing desire for closeness, because it can happen in public or in private, with everyone or no one watching. Your heart endures, picks up scars, carries you from one day to the next. Your hands take on the world, like Atlas in miniature, but can lay their work aside to show someone else the extent of their care. We lock our hearts behind our bones and spend small eternities scared to allow another person access, but our hands reach out in euphoria, time and time again, eager to be held.
It is also about holding another person; the act of tenderness a silent conversation. I’m glad you’re here, I’m safe with you, stay close to me. Kindness can be left unsaid if it is felt. It doesn’t have to be romantic to be love. You can tuck your hand into your best friend’s with the same care you do your boyfriend’s, because while a specific relationship is covered with the colours of its particular nature affection must be a constant. Just look at our bodies: love is written in the margins. Humans are the only bipedal primates, which means we are the only ones to walk on two legs for nearly all our lives, which frees our hands from the concern of holding us up and allows us to hold someone else.
Touch is a translation of the ache to be loved a bit more. Language is a beautiful thing, one that brings into being what doesn’t exist by talking about it, providing words for the unimaginable. While we can ask for the reassurance we desire, there is a difference in taking someone’s hand. Their responding grasp cannot be replicated in any comfort they might offer us verbally. I suppose this is why digital means of communication (calls, texting, instant messaging) remain inferior to someone else’s presence. You can’t hold someone’s hand through a phone call. There is an intimacy in falling asleep at the same time, talking until your voices give out, but these pale in comparison to the reality of touch. Among the love languages, physical touch is my favourite, and it is stored in the hands.
I wonder about what must be left unsaid—what can touch convey that words do not? Often I have found myself unable to vocalize what I mean, my faithful subject-verb-adjective compositions failing me in times of emotion. Instead I will let my touch linger on someone’s arm, nudge their side like a conspirator, take a page out of my grandfather’s book to touch with the backs of my fingers, ready to retract if it’s unwanted. My social science teacher once declared that the unique power of humans is to talk about what doesn’t exist. When we hold each other we are expanding the limits of the unsayable, communicating in a language we share with every sort of animal. It is a reassurance that every species on the planet is familiar with: I am here, I am not going, I am with you. A thousand small declarations packed into one touch, tidal waves of love that no writer could hope to do justice.
The absence of touch is a story too. Once I had to get the attention of a boy I liked, because we were leaving the classroom and he was distracted, and I curled my hand like a vulture’s claw, tapped his shoulder with enough detachment to hope my hands didn’t betray me. Shying away from touch is sometimes rooted in fear of what the touch will reveal. You walk away from tenderness because you don’t want to betray how much you want it, because you don’t think you deserve it, because it is a foreign country and the sand you stand on feels so much more stable. Vulnerability is terrifying, like passing Chekhov’s gun to someone who could fire it at any moment. There you are devastated, regretting taking the chance to be loved in the first place, gutted by the depth of your own desire.
Here is the crux of the history of hands: they were made to hold, even if the holding doesn’t last, even if it doesn’t go the way you might imagine. We do not love in the hope of reciprocation. Affection is not a transaction or an investment where we gauge value in terms of the return. When you reach out, you hope that you will be held, but the possibility of pain does not justify cowardice. The Beatles sang “I want to hold your hand” over and over again, an interminable refrain of tenderness. The oldest urge in the world: I want to hold your hand.