Breathe
By Mónica Hernández
Touch is one of the five senses, one that we learn to feel and read without realizing it, from the moment we are born. Whether it is because someone holds us, caresses us, counts our fingers and toes, or touches our nose, which one day will grow to resemble that of someone else in our family tree. Touch molds us, because through the skin that caresses us from birth we receive love and tenderness. Or it molds us by the lack of the same: because no one caresses us, because no one slides a finger over our cheeks, or because no one draws the arch of our eyebrows. Or because someone does it with viciousness, with malice, with the intention of hurting us.
According to the dictionary definition, touch is the action of feeling. It is the bodily sense with which the sensations of contact, pressure, temperature, texture and hardness are perceived. That which allows organisms to perceive the qualities of objects and people. But the official definition does not include the fact that touch also allows us to perceive feelings. Who has not been able to feel love, passion, urgency and even desire with the touch of another's touch? Who has not felt the lack of love, indifference and even the contempt of another, a stranger, just by touching us? I would swear that when my mother held my hand I was able to tell if she was happy, angry, excited or even bored. I knew when something hurt or worried her. I felt the same way again when I became a mother: under my touch my baby's skin told me about her dreams, her nightmares, her worries. And also of his pain and his joys.
