Lisa Geichman Prosek

My grandchildren knew me before they even realized it.

When I held one-week-old Carter, I spoke to him quietly and caressed his soft little shoulder as it peeked out from the baby blue blanket. This new little boy, aware of almost nothing but his need for creature comforts, got a puzzled look on his face as if he were saying, “I like that. And I don’t know you, but I know you.”

It was the same when my granddaughter, Quinn, came into the world.

The babies knew me because I sound a bit like their mother. More important, my touch feels like hers.

From the time I first held Carter and Quinn’s mommy as a baby, I held her a particular way and stroked her skin with my own special touch. She internalized these characteristics and now touches her children the same way.

Just as I internalized my own mother’s touch so many years ago.

We first hear our mother’s voice while still in the womb. Once born, we tie our mother’s touch to her voice and make a connection to the time before birth when all our needs were satisfied without our even understanding what those needs were. In this way our mother’s touch becomes the ultimate security. A tangible sign that we’re safe and our needs will be met. As we start our studies in The School Of Hard Knocks, our mother’s touch signals that, no matter how bad things are, we’re still wanted and loved and cheered for, absolutely.

My mother died three years before my sister’s cancer started gaining ground in 2011, leaving the rest of us to care for Beth in the final phase of her illness. Beth’s mother-in-law even left her warm home in Florida to stay at my sister’s house during Ohio’s winter months. This loving stand-in mother gave Beth her medications, cooked for Beth, even hugged her and comforted her otherwise. Still, as hard as she tried, she couldn’t provide Beth’s mother’s touch.

Though my visits to Beth’s bedside mostly involved happy chats about TV shows, movies, and current events while we ate special meals from favorite restaurants, I sometimes reflected quietly about how the cancer worked to conquer Beth’s body. I became aware of my abject helplessness to fend off the deadly invader. In those moments, I didn’t know what to say to Beth. Painful, pregnant pauses that threatened to even further empower the cancer.

Sometimes when those helpless moments arrived, not knowing what else to do, I ran my fingers gently over Beth’s head, bald from chemotherapy. As soon as my fingertips brushed her skin, Beth involuntarily closed her eyes and vocalized. “Oh…” She seemed to be magically drawn into a soothing reverie, and a grin broke across her face. Without fail, a few moments later Beth started conversations about our mother.

“Remember how Mom used to rub our necks and backs and play with our hair?”

We’d then laugh about how we and our brother used to fight over who got to go first for this delightful treatment or who got the longest back rub.

Then, as Beth lay in the hospital bed in her living room, she and I reminisced about special foods that Mom made for us when we were kids or times she comforted us in other ways.

With the awkward cancer-empowering moment behind us, we forgot about the invader and made the most of the day.

Because of the way mothers transfer their touch to their children, in the end, my mother was able to be there for Beth during her baby daughter’s last days, without even stepping into the room.

Mom’s touch transcended the door through which Beth later departed.