Whenever I would try to describe the friendly checker at Trader Joe’s to my friends — I know, I know, they’re all friendly — I would make sure to tell them one thing.
He hugs.
He’s the hugger.
Nearly a decade later, Christopher Leon is still wearing Hawaiian-themed shirts at the SouthPointe grocery store. He’s still checking and sacking and stocking shelves.
But he’s not hugging me.
He’s not hugging you or anyone else.
And it’s hard.
“Human touch has always been my sweet spot,†the 56-year-old says. “My soft spot.â€
Leon isn’t alone. The huggers of the world are hurting and the people who welcome their hugs are hurting, too.
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Teachers can’t hug their students. Grandparents can’t hug their grandkids. The grieving can’t fall into the arms of friends. The dying can't feel the tender touch of their loved ones.
Joy can’t be expressed with a bear hug. A hello doesn’t come with an embrace.
I like a good hug. The medicine of touch, a salve for the soul.
“Usually, when I give somebody a hug, I am trying to give them energy,†Leon said on his day off earlier this week. “And I’m getting energy back.â€
My cousin Debbie Bartlett was a great hugger. Her hugs were long and firm. A chiropractic hug. A whole body handshake full of love.
My friend Cathie Huddle is a hugger, too. Comfort hugs, like mashed potatoes with butter, hugs with an ahhh at the end.
At Trader Joe’s, Leon gave friendly hugs. He had a sense about who wanted one, so he didn’t rush everybody who walked by. He’d ask to make sure and after those boundaries were set, he had his regulars.
It’s hard to put a number on, he said. A lot. Maybe 20 hugs a day.
Anna Zach always got one of those hugs from Leon when she stopped to shop at her favorite grocery store. She’s a hugger, too.
“I think people who hug, that’s the way they communicate that warmth, through their hugs. For Chris, I think it shows his kindness as a human being, like his personality in a physical form.â€
It might sound weird, she says, but Leon and the employees at Trader Joe’s are like a family to her.
It’s strange going to the store now. She knows they are smiling behind their masks, working hard to keep shoppers safe.
‘There’s just a kind of sadness to it.â€
Leon grew up in a military family. His grandparents lived in Crete, and, after a banking career in Boston and New York, he came back to take care of his ailing grandma.
He retired from the world of finance for good and stayed put in Lincoln.
In the two decades since, he’s survived cancer and the loss of his husband, Darren McCarty, who died in May 2018, after his own long battle with the disease.
Recently, he moved from the house the two shared and bought another one across town. A swanky house, he jokes, with a big deck, perfect for entertaining.
And right before the country started to shut down, he threw a cocktail party and got in some last hugs.
Now he looks out at his neighbors, all of them in their own safe bubbles.
Now the grocery store hugger is an essential worker helping to feed his city.
He rotates through the store with other team members. Tallying customers to make sure no more than 30 are inside shopping. Sanitizing carts and shelves. Standing behind plastic shields to take money. Enforcing the 6-foot rule, wearing face masks.
It’s tough, he says.
“It makes all of us sad. But we love our customers and no one wants them to get corona at the store, because when all this is over, we want to see them back.â€
He knows that it’s hard for the shoppers, too.
“The thing about grocery stores, a lot of times, we are the only human contact people have all day. There are so many people who work from home, so many retired people.â€
The other day, he delivered groceries to one of them, a customer in her 90s who’d recently lost her husband.
Leon knew what that grief felt like and he wanted so much to comfort her.
“She wanted a hug so bad,†he said. “But, the last thing I want to do is give her the corona if I have it on my clothes.â€
Every night, when he gets home from work, he takes his clothes off, throws them in the washing machine and jumps in the shower.
His sister is staying with him, caught by the pandemic halfway home to California. They cook and have dinner.
The two of them sanitize like crazy.
Then he gets up for another day behind a face mask, making sure people can fill their refrigerators and pantries.
Like all of us, he waits for the day when things change. Some days he feels a little anxious, a little down.
“It's kind of making me sad," he says. "So many people need a hug.â€
The Trader Joe’s hugger, included.