Hugs and Snoodles

**Warning: sappy post**

It was all started by a book, as many good things in my life are.

I have never been a “Huggy” person or a “touchy-feely” person. Probably because my mother wasn’t either. Not that I didn’t love my children, but somewhere around their second birthday, I just didn’t actively think about hugging and snuggling them any more.

That all changed the summer I read “Missing May” by Cynthia Rylant. It is about an orphan girl who has been passed from relative to relative until she is taken in by a couple named May and Ob.

“…the first time I saw Ob help May braid her long yellow hair, sitting in the kitchen one night, it was all I could do not to go to the woods and cry forever from happiness. I know I must have been loved like that, I must have; otherwise, how could I…