Belly Time

Inspirational song: Let Me Touch You for a While (Alison Krauss)

I promised deep thoughts tonight, and I have spent the entire day pondering a very heavy topic, with generational implications, but I am not ready to get into that one. I am angry at a group of immoral old men, too angry to do anything but rant and call names. I'm going to bury that resentment right now, and think about happier things. Cue the rainbows and glitter.

A few years ago, I put words to a pattern of behavior I noticed with the cats. The term I came up with wasn't sophisticated, but it served my purpose. I had a lot of time lying around, between recovering from surgeries and wallowing in misery in my gluten-consuming days. My favorite white cat took advantage of my inertia, and gave me lots of what would come to be called "belly time." She draped across my abdomen, belly to belly, and purred for hours. In my Lortab euphoria, I imagined that she was fully aware of the soothing and healing properties of purring, and this was her attempt at mothering me a little in return. Long after I stopped needing or wanting those opiates, I continued observing the belly time habits of all the cats. It was common to most of them, needing to spend time chest to chest, face to face with me. In a more sober frame of mind, I started thinking about what a mutually soothing bonding time that is, and I let myself be more still and cognizant of the emotional conversation that happens during belly time. I've also noticed that medical professionals are starting to stress belly time for newborns, both immediately after birth, and during the first year, as absolutely crucial to an infant's emotional growth and brain function. They say that infants need that skin to skin contact to develop into strong, resilient children. Now, as a parent, I wonder whether I spent enough time giving that belly time to my own children when they were young, as I do now intentionally with my fur babies.

It's not just relevant in a parent-child relationship (which I consider applicable to my relationship with my animals, do not doubt). I have found that in my last year of solitude, one of the things I miss most is getting to spend time just standing chest to chest with my man. It's simple, it isn't dramatic or passionate, but it's incredibly important. I hug my friends and family, but this is different. This is an exchange of energy that I crave and miss like crazy. I can handle taking care of the house and yard by myself, I can handle being the only one who can fly out to evaluate flood damage on our kids' homes, I can handle spending the holidays alone (mostly). But living without belly time for more than a year is turning out to be way too much for me.