No Sex, Please; We're Parents
The real reason I'm turned off.
by Jeanne Sager
June 2, 2008
It was supposed to be poetic, romantic even.
In the movie-long letter to her baby, Keri Russell's character in Waitress had just told her fetus, "I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for twenty minutes straight and that's all they do. They don't pull away. They don't look at your face. They don't try to kiss you. All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight, without an ounce of selfishness in it."
"Aaaaach!" I said. "That sounds awful!"
My husband reacted as if I'd slapped him. He pulled his arm from my shoulder and sank away across the couch. I should have felt bad. I just felt relief.
Oh, to not be touched.
Someone has their hands on us all day long. We get "touched out."
I rolled my aching neck to the left, to the right and back again and ran my fingers slowly across the red splotch on my thigh where my two-and-a-half-year-old had kicked me trying to climb out of her wagon. Soon, it would be black and blue.
We'd finally gotten Jillian to bed after just three readings of Llama, Llama, Red Pajama, and slipped in a DVD. I wanted to throw my legs out across the couch and burrow under a blanket, but Jonathan got there first. When I made for the recliner, he reached for me, pulled me onto the cushion beside him. And there I stayed, trapped until I insulted him.
I didn't mean to. I just needed the break from physical contact.
My aunt calls it being "touched out." Someone has their hands on us all day long when we're new parents, she says. Our kids yank on our T-shirts, begging for another Danimals yogurt drink. They wiggle onto our laps. We curl our too-tall bodies into too-small toddler beds to cuddle frightened children at two a.m. We make dinner with Tonka trucks ramming our heels. We eat that dinner with children on our laps, our plates side-by-side.
©2008 Jeanne Sager and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Jeanne Sager is a freelance writer and photographer living in upstate New York with her husband and daughter, Jillian. She maintains a blog of her award-winning columns at jeannesager.blogspot.com. |
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