Cold Feet. Warm Heart.

I was in bed the other night and my son came in, per usual, to snuggle. That’s his routine, all 6 feet or so of him. He comes in first thing in the morning to snuggle, and last thing before he gets into his own bed for the night.

Sometimes, I admit, it’s a perfunctory thing for me, especially before bed. I’m tired, and I just want to go to sleep. I give him a couple of minutes, literally, then shoo him off to his own room. Like a parched plant needs water, this man-child needs to snuggle. I wonder sometimes, if he were “neurotypical” (whatever that means), or if he had a girlfriend, would he need me this way? Or his father, who is back-up snuggler when I won’t get up and go into my son’s bed to snuggle.

The other night, I lingered with my son, enjoying our together time while my husband was elsewhere with the dogs. We put our heads together and then my son did the delicious thing he often does: he wrapped his arm across my midsection and intertwined his fingers with mine. Those are moments of deep, precious intimacy, of quiet togetherness. I dare not break the spell with words. I dare not ask if this posture makes him feel especially loved, or uniquely safe.

We just breathe together, quietly, and I think about how of all the gifts in a world full of gifts, this might be the greatest of all. Just two people who love each other, quietly embracing, until one goes off to his bed to sleep. There is something about touch that nurtures deeply. I often think about how I wish I’d hugged my father more, that not needing to say a word, he would have known how much I loved him, how much I wanted him to feel my love.

I believe that in the transmission of touch, we communicate whole galaxies of feeling. Words are moot in those moments, consigned to a place beyond, where silence is now supreme, where interlocking fingers speak volumes, where the slight touching of heads and the rhythm of breath take over, and all else falls away.

I try to tell myself to hold fast to this feeling, because I do not know what daybreak will bring, if something cacophonous will intrude. Perhaps this is why when people are reunited, hugs come first. They communicate everything and more.

I am tempted at times to ask my son why snuggling is so important to him, but I don’t. The limitations of what he can share with speech would somehow, I fear, diminish the magic and the power of our snuggling, reducing it to something that can be described, when all of what is extraordinary about it is precisely that it cannot be described with words.

But if my snuggling with my son is encased in its own magic, its spell — like all magic spells — can be broken. And my son has a foolproof way of taking the calm and intimacy of our bedtime routine and shaking it beyond recognition. All he has to do is touch his ice cold feet to mine and yelps, and shouts and laughter replace the calm. And then I kick him out of my bed with mock outrage and send him to his room. Until the next morning, when the cycle starts over again. Warmest heart, coldest feet. Grateful mom.