DANIELLE WOOD
Full disclosure: I’m a hugger. It’s not that I hug absolutely everyone, but my ‘To Hug’ list is extensive. Always, it includes family, friends, and work colleagues who are either very happy or very sad, but sometimes it also stretches to acquaintances, people I only just met, and even – occasionally – complete strangers. Also, dogs.
For those of us who communicate with hugs – hello, goodbye, I like you, I’m sorry, let me comfort you, I’m pleased for you – social distancing is hard. It’s excruciating for us huggers to stand stiffly while a neighbour weeps about a broken heart, or when a friend announces a new pregnancy.
It’s not just the deprivation that’s difficult, though. For automatic huggers, the need to be socially distant has also opened up a whole new world of potential faux pas.
Last week, on a day when the pandemic was at the back of my mind instead of at the forefront, I forgot myself and reached out to hug a friend of my mother’s, only to have her step back and say, “Don’t”. She didn’t say it in an unpleasant way, but even so, I felt dreadful for hours, as if I’d committed some appalling social atrocity like spitting in her soup.
Not only is the pandemic forcing me to curb my affectionate tendencies, it’s also teaching me what it’s like to be the reluctant recipient of social hugging.
Recently, a lovely woman I’d only just met rightly identified me as a fellow member of the effusive tribe, and reached out. Normally, this would have been a nice moment – the first embrace of a new friendship, the physical manifestation of ‘I really like you’ and ‘I hope we’re going to hang out more’.
But … COVID-19! To hug, or not to hug? That was the question, and there was no time to think up a good answer? Should I back off? Put up a hand like a stop sign? Risk upsetting her and making her feel rejected? Or, just take the hug while holding my breath and thinking sanitary thoughts? In the end, I engineered a kind of half-hug – something like a tango dance hold.
In a place like Victoria, where everybody is (or should be) on super high alert, there would (or should be) less ambiguity around these moments. But right now on our island, there’s a lot of variation in how people are feeling, reacting and following the rules. In this fluid situation, we’re not so much observing as creating a whole new set of social conventions.
Having felt awkward as both hugger and hugee, I’ve tried to be more organised. On one occasion, I sent a text ahead of a catchup with a friend that I would normally embrace: “So, we probably shouldn’t hug. What will we do instead?” We decided on a curtsy.
Forward planning is all very well when you can see a hug coming, but what about those surprise-hug moments? I’m seriously considering having a T-shirt made. It would say: TRYING NOT TO HUG (BUT IT DOESN’T MEAN I DON’T LIKE YOU).
It’s interesting to observe, however, that not everybody is hating the lack of hugs. One of my friends is overjoyed by her sudden release from hug-expectation.