In Praise of Tactility

I've always been a touchy-feely kinda guy.

For almost forty years, my beloved wife and I lived in each others arms. We walked close together arm-in-arm. We bumped along hip-to-thigh through household tasks. She had great piano hands, and we bounced around on the piano-stool, sang and danced through our days. We slept in each others' arms.

Nancy was striking. A beautiful and magnetic person. She was five-foot-seven, hundred-twenty-five pounds, blond hair and green eyes: an athlete with a brick-house body. Most of my adult life I've been barely six-foot tall, a trim 175 pounds. By accident of nature, our bodies slid together and moved as one. Body and mind, heart and soul. . .we were a perfect fit. In fact, in the first year of our so-called courtship we slept single-file on a narrow couch-bed in what we fondly termed our INefficiency apartment.

And she was brilliant. In fact, my best friends said that to their knowledge she had only made one mistake in her life. (I never could figure out what that mistake might've been!) But she was the keenest listener, the quickest seer and thinker I've ever known. . .a natural-born leader. People always looked to her for decisions and approval.

She was warm and winning, approachable, a perceptive listener with a reassuring presence. Part of it was her wonderful face, the way she focused her eyes -- her entire attention -- upon those who approached her with questions or seeking directions. She cared so much, had such personal warmth, wielded such gentle power. She cared about the people around her. She helped them. She was a virtual fountain of creative energy, and she used that energy for others.

She touched people. . .literally and figuratively, she touched them. She worked close range. Her so-called social distance might've been no more than three feet. I mean, a teacher approached her with a problem, a need to discuss and share a situation. Such a person might stop four or five feet away. But Nancy was likely to reach out gently, place a hand on the other's forearm or hand, then step in close. People didn't step back. There they stood, face-to-face, speaking quietly, richly present to each other within a circle with a diameter no longer than two-three feet. Nancy's circle was a close, safe, and creative place.

She was, as I've said, a reassuring presence. She looked good. She was attentive. She even smelled good. She took control of so-called "problem-exchanges." She asked questions, identified and clarified problems. Like all good leaders, she involved people in the problems they brought to her. And such were her skills of shared problem-solving, so clarifying was her approach, that within that small circle, the person often came up with his or her own solution.

People loved Nancy. She helped them be more productive, more competent. Her special gift to others was largely this: she taught people they had the power to make their own lives better in myriad ways. It's a good thing to have the power to help people. It 's even better to teach them they have the power to help themselves. Such an approach to leadership is truly UNselfish.


As I said: those who worked with Nancy loved her. I certainly loved her. . .instantly.

I met her in July, 1970. I had left my university professorship to take the principalship of what was then one of the largest integrated high schools in the state of Ohio. It's now easy to forget how back in those days diverse settings were difficult places. Even today, without good leadership people with largely different economic and social backgrounds are apt to find life troublesome, filled with needless conflict. Nancy was by nature a healer. During her first year on our administrative team we became inseparable teammates, then deeply committed friends. We believed the same things and lived the same values. We thought alike, felt the same way about important things.

Friends always stuck their tongues in their cheeks and asked me: "Where did you find this woman? What's she doing with the likesa you?" I'd always laugh and say: "I didn't find her. She just walked into my office one day."

And it's true. In July of 1970, I took the principalship of this big and troubled integrated high school in Dayton, Ohio. I was working twenty-four hours a day,

Building my team.
Identifying strong faculty leadership.
Writing new administrative policy.
Meeting students and their families
at large picnics throughout the attendance district.
Learning the community.
Writing new policy and programs.
Making friends.

I was in the midst of writing a new health education program that involved a large community-service component. The program was necessary, in part, because a scheduling glitch had developed in the curriculum several semesters before I got there. Therefore, I inherited about six-hundred juniors and seniors who had not taken the state-required Health-Education class. And they couldn't graduate until they took the class.

Sometimes, a problem like this becomes an opportunity. Troubled schools often develop a pattern by which they export their problems directly into the community. I saw in this health-class dilemma a chance to export useful student-service instead.

As I discussed this program with my superintendent and assistant superintendent for curriculum, I said what they realized: in order for this program to work, we had to have a special sort of supervisor:

one who knew and was committed to the community,
one who knew and liked the merchants and service agencies,
one who was known, admired, and trusted.
A person of real strength and substance.
In short, a bright, energetic and winning person.

As we spoke about the program, my two buddies brightened up. They liked the service-learning idea. More important: they said the very person we needed was already on the faculty.

We had been discussing the program around lunchtime one Saturday. So I whipped out my pocket calendar and said: "Okay! This coming Tuesday is Bastille Day. Have this person meet me in my office at 6:o0 that morning."

Wayne looked shocked: "Bob! This is summer vacation. What kinda teacher'll show up mid-July for an interview at 6:00 in the morning during vacation-time?"

I winked and responded: "The only kind I'll consider hiring for a job this important!"

That Tuesday morning I came in around 5:30 and began sketching the program on the twelve-foot green chalkboard I'd had installed on my office wall. At about 5:55 I heard a kick-stand quietly squeak down. I turned around and saw Nancy standing there with her hands on the handle-bars of her bike. (This was inner-city Dayton. You leave a bike outside, you lose it.)

She was tall and tan and striking in a cute cotton tennis-dress. Long, gorgeous legs. Tiny footies in tennies at one end. Close-cropped golden-blond hair at the other.

She ignored me, her eyes fixed on the chalkboard. I was transfixed!

I had left three sections of the outline largely blank, knowing that the right person would surely understand how those sections might be written, and would appreciate being included in the creative process. I reached out and grabbed my empty coffee urn, tried to clear my throat, and barely squeaked out: "Coffee's gone. I'll get some more."

She shook her head side-to-side signifying no-coffee-for-me, her eyes studying the chalkboard. She still hadn't looked at me. Like all confident women, she stood there ignoring me, letting me look at her.

I'd consumed six cups of coffee. I needed to pee. I was smitten and speechless. Close to wetting my levis. I had never before seen such a striking woman that close-up. To say that I was totally disarmed is a massive understatement. I felt my reaction to her appearance was totally inappropriate. She had me back-pedaling. I was struggling for composure.

Finally, she approached me, still studying the chalkboard. She still hadn't even looked at me. As she stepped past me, she held out her hand, palm-up. I dropped the chalk into her hand and started for the door: "Some ice-water? Tea? Soda?" But she shook me off. We hadn't even exchanged names. In retrospect, over the years I came to know that such behavior was typical of Nancy. As a professional, she had the power to focus upon and study a problem. And later, as we spoke about the project she hoped to lead, she always said something like: "Sure I was interested in meeting you, in getting the job the superintendents spoke to me briefly about. but my major interest that morning was seeing your idea and judging your competence." Oooops!?

Believe me, this was a woman -- a person -- I soon learned I had to work hard to live-UP to.

Anyway, that morning we met, she focused all her attention on the green chalk-board. Not until we began discussing the project did she look at me. Which was a good thing. . .because I was in shock. I never really interviewed her for the job. Instead, we discussed the project and developed a deeper shared understanding of how it might work, and how we might make it work better.

And as the years of our friendship unfolded, whenever we discussed our first meeting, I would say to her: "I fell in love with you instantly that morning. When did you begin to like me?" She would always grin and say: "Well!? I saw your picture and the announcement of your appointment in the paper the week before. I thought you looked nice." Then she would laugh and hug me all-big. And kiss me. But she never gave me any further reassurance about that first meeting.

I didn't care. Over the four decades of our rollicking and adventuresome marriage, she gave me an entirely new and wonderfully challenging life. I'll TAKE IT! In my sanest moments I know she loved me. And of course she often told me so in the passage of a day. Mostly, Nancy acted out "I love you."

But that day of our first meeting: in a split second, she began to write in the open spaces on the chalkboard. I had to get out of there. I headed for the cafeteria for more coffee. . .for a chance to collect myself. When I came back to the office about fifteen minutes later, she had completed the diagram. Immediately, she fixed me with her eyes and began discussing the program: the things I'd written, the things she'd added. I was mesmerized.

And as she spoke, raised questions, problems, and solutions, I thought: "Geeezus! She's smart, too. . . ." And it's true: she was always the quickest and smartest and kindest of the two of us.

Still, that Bastille-Day morning. . .that was the morning I met and hired the woman who freed me and helped me grow the rest of my life. . .the woman I later married and loved more each day for nearly forty years.

Now, nearly four decades later I think of those final terrible weeks of October, 2006, when breast cancer spread to her liver and killed her. Be assured: those weeks we spent like every other week of our long-shared life. . .in each others' arms.

And since her death, no other woman has ever really touched me. . .or even acted as if she wished to. 'Sokay. I know I'm mostly an aging wreck of a man. I know that. I also know I've been well-loved by Nancy my entire adult life.



But I remind you the title of this posting is In Praise of Tactility. I began this posting with the sentence: "I've always been a touchy-feely kinda guy." And that's true. Still, since Nancy's death I've come to feel outcast. . .untouchable.

BUT! Just lately something really good has happened. My daughter has moved into this big gorgeous house with her two wonderful young sons. Taylor is seven. Konnor is five. They are truly lovely, smart, and delightful boys. Tara is much like Nancy. She has taken over and improved the household. Believe it: we three Lost Boys romp around and make a ruckus that nearly clatters the house down. They like to wrestle me down, dive onto me. . . . It's like we're right out of some loud and robust sword-fight-scene from Peter Pan:

ShiverMEtimbers!
TakeTHATmatey!
AvastLUBBER!
I'm gonna getcher GIZZARD!
Touche'!
GOTCHA!

And I get 'em screeching to my lumbering Tick-Tock-Crock and wild-One-Eye-Hook who're gonna GET'EM real good in just one second. We whack away all-wild with swords, just short of knocking the house down.

But really: it's the wrestling, the ARGHH'S and MATEY'S, the growling hugs, the way they pounce on me and drag me down and jump on top of me. . .the laying-on-of-hands: that love-touching is what has brought my rambunctious and rollicking inner-boy-child right back to life. . .long after I had come to think him dead. And along with all this shared boyish delight, there has also come rushing back much of the joy that Nancy and I so patiently built over the decades of our loving.

In those terrible final weeks of Nancy's life, she said to me again and again: "Find a woman you can love who loves you. . . ." I know that was the final gift she wished to give me.

But I'm aging. And I've learned over the passing years that I'm no longer attractive to the sort of woman I might wish to choose. In all these years of heart-break and struggle since Nancy's death, no female outside my family has ventured to touch me.

But that's okay. I know I can be happy. . .maybe even productive. Tara's come home for awhile.

And she's brought me my grandsons. ARGHHHHH!
The little pirates have touched me and stolen my heart.