My eight-year-old son demonstrated the high-five he invented with his best friend, and while I will certainly not divulge the particulars, let me say that the combination of slaps and snaps skipped me back to my own youth when my buddy and I had our own moves.

I remember inventing handshakes during recess, sneaking away to some quiet corner of the playground, and working out the moves with our palms and fingers. Once we had hit upon the right combination, we would share this special handshake outside the elementary school before class, then at the end of the day before parting ways.

In his incredible book, “There’s Always This Year,” Hanif Abdurraqib remembers such handshakes with his friends as a “series of moves [that] were quick but still slow enough to linger.”

I don’t remember the specifics of the combination of finger snaps, but I remember the grin on my friend’s face.

I’m touched that my son would share this particular handshake with me, yet I know there will be others that are only with his friends. That’s as it should be. Most of all, I’m delighted that he has a buddy with whom to share something special. Again, quoting Abdurraqib, this kind of handshake “lingers just long enough to know that we’ve put work into our love for each other.”

Love that lasts. Some 35 years later, I still smile at the memory.

Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of “Little Big Moments,” a collection of mini-essays about parenting, and “Tigers, Mice & Strawberries: Poems.” Both titles are available most anywhere books are sold online. Taylor-Troutman lives in Chapel Hill where he serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church and occasionally stumbles upon the wondrous while in search of his next cup of coffee.

 

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