“My life was mostly touch in those days. . .  All day long I touched the clean plates and bowls as I put them away, and the children’s heads slimy under shampoo in the tub, and the softness of their faces, and the scrape of poop off their goose pimpling backsides, the hot noodles, the heavy wet laundry as I threw it into the dryer, and the brick front steps as i sat reading to myself for eight minutes while they played just beyond the page in the prickling new grass, and then when one of them fell down I touched the grass and the mud and the scraped knee, and the sticky Band-Aids, and the wet cheek, and my jeans, and the dangling shoelace.”  —  Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves.  

I used to think of myself as an affectionate person.  At least I don’t remember being repulsed…