Physical affection was not part of my life growing up. But I have never felt less loved because of it. Love was just translated into other forms for our family. Like financial support. Rides for all your friends. Activities after school. Demands to practice piano daily. Family dinners. Concern over grades less than As. ... you know, the regular asian immigrant child stuff.
I remember pouring over my parents' wedding album when I was younger. Slowly moving my hands over the images that did not seem like people I knew. I never witnessed kissing or hugging or hand holding between my parents in real life. Well, maybe when I was 16, they would jokingly hold hands, but it was never a common occurrence in our family. To see them in a close embrace was almost an awkward confrontation of strangers that were once my parents. But the photos were a thousand unspoken words of confused awe to me. Mostly I admired and wondered as I carefully observed these two people from another life.
Over the years, we would become more American, and as a mom now, I would see my parents hug and kiss their grandkids, but even when I hug them now to say farewell after spending some vacation time back home, it seems unnatural, a little bit forced, and sometimes awkward. And it makes me wonder if I'll ever find it weird to hug my kids because I'm not by nature, a physical person. When my older kids run to embrace me and just want to cuddle, I often find it uncomfortable and force myself to give them some love. But I need my space. And I don't like being smothered by my kids' physical affection. I find myself wondering why they don't love me because they aren't cleaning up on demand, aren't doing their homework as quickly as I like, and then I have to stop because I realize my mentality is very much built on my own upbringing and it's becoming increasingly harder to deliberately break away from it.
But my parents were immigrants, and I'm not. I was born in America. So I'm different.... right? Odd enough, I still feel stifled when friends tried to hug me and I didn't know quite how to respond. A pat on the back seemed more normal to me. Or bones. I was really good at that. And high fives. And yet, hugs seemed to be the common spoken language in America that I was still struggling to learn. A second language to me.
And then one day I kissed my husband in front of our kids, and they gasped. And then they were embarrassed. Shocked too. What just happened?! I guess a quick reality check would report that husband and I don't hold hands in public. Or hug. Or kiss. Hmmm. Maybe we were more Chinese than we initially thought? We've never been big on PDA though. Yet, while dating, it seemed more normal to show affection by holding hands and hugging, probably because we didn't live together and see each other all the time. And though I never felt deprived of physical affection growing up, I certainly didn't want my kids to wonder who those people were kissing in their wedding photos from years ago.
So now we are trying hard to not only give our own kids more embraces throughout the day, randomly, not just the morning kiss good-bye and welcome home hug, but random acts of physical affection. And husband and I are trying more to hug for no reason (because apparently hugs don't have to be intentionally distributed all the time...), hold hands randomly, and kiss occasionally in front of the kids.
