I don’t wanna hold your hand

As I watched the inauguration ceremony of President Joe Biden, I noticed how prevalent the act of hand-holding was among the power couples. The president and First Lady Dr Jill Biden constantly clasp paws, as do Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband, the Second Gentleman, Doug Emhoff. Perhaps holding hands is the American way.

You don’t see much evidence of it in the British political upper echelons, though there was that peculiar incident when former president Donald Trump briefly clasped the hand of former British prime minister Theresa May when they walked down the White House colonnade together.

Talk about a clash of cultures and a radical departure from the exchange of a stiff-upper-lip peck on the cheek.

When Melania Trump appeared to recoil from having her hand commandeered by Donald, disdainfully swatting hubby’s claw away, it had the body-language experts working overtime interpreting the rejection. Perhaps Melania was struggling with changing from her lady-wholunches, preferred managed isolation status to being first lady, and had forgotten to put a No PDA (Public Display of Affection) clause in her contract.

The Obamas were inveterate hand-holders, so anything they could do, Trump was determined to do better and more overtly.

Here at home, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and fiance´ Clarke Gayford aren’t in the habit of the corny hand-hold, the last ‘‘first’’ couple of New Zealand who were habitual hand-holders being Jenny Shipley and husband Burton.

I totally understand the hand-holding of elderly couples using each other as ballast to lend support, keep upright and navigate footpaths to prevent falls. But I don’t understand the co-dependent need for fit and healthy couples to hold hands every time they step out.

What goes through their minds when they routinely link up? Are their brains co-joined as well as their mitts? What terrors do they think will befall them if they dare to walk on the earth as separate independent units? Are they so insecure about the status of their relationship that they worry lest some random will swoop down like an eagle and pluck their partner from them?

It’s one thing to want to bond and celebrate intimacy by holding a hand every now and then, but it’s another to see partners permanently shackled.

Grasshopper says, you cannot possess or own another by constantly tethering them to you.

It’s the glove manufacturers I feel sorry for. No need for mittens when a warm hand is within reach on a freezing winter’s day. But what about the other cold hand? Or having to clutch-up and clasp a perspiring paw during the hot sweaty days of climate change?

It’s natural and understandable to reach out to hold hands when you’re terrified, or certain death is impending. When Thelma and Louise decided to drive off a cliff rather than face imprisonment or the electric chair/s, they avoided that fate by joining hands and putting pedal to the metal.

In a chapel in an ancient site of pilgrimage in Leicestershire, England, archaeologists unearthed two approximately 700-year-old skeletons, of what they believe to be a woman and a man, holding hands. Who knows what had happened to them but they were ‘‘holding’’, as the drug dealers say, when they faced that final curtain.

American leaders emphatically hold hands with partners to signal they’re capable of warmth and stability. In the midst of the cult of the individual, one has to be seen as part of a Noah’s ark two to be trusted.