The Forearm Shake

This is Doña Maria. I took her picture on May this year. I met her when I walked by her house in the hamlet of Guázuma, in La Sierra, part of the Central Mountain Range of Dominican Republic. She was standing at her door, looking out, as if looking or waiting for someone. She had such a beautiful and interesting face. I said hello and she asked me in.

We sat on rocking chairs in her modest house and talked for a few minutes. I asked her about her family. She told me she had lived on her own in that house for a long time. She told me that she'd had 12 children, 10 of whom she lost before their second birthday. She told me one of those two she managed to raise to adulthood, the boy, had recently moved in back with her after his divorce, bringing with him a daughter. She told also about me about her health.

Although Doña Maria spoke shortly about her life, on her face you could read a long biography written in wrinkles and shades of tan and brown and pink. A living and moving roadmap to a hard and interesting life that told me a lot more of what she had lived through than her words did. But she didn't seem bitter or despondent; she smiled frequently and actually appeared content, at peace.

After taking her picture and sitting with her for a few more minutes, we said goodbye with a typical Dominican forearm shake. Since I haven't experienced this type of greeting in any other culture, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is a purely Dominican embrace until I'm proven wrong.

This is how it goes: instead of holding hands and shaking, you hold each others forearms and shake, only not with the same side, as in a bro shake, but using opposing forearms. It's more intimate than a handshake but less so than a hug; an automatic sign of inclusion and acceptance.

Without words it says: "I like you and I will be happy when I see you again, so please come back soon." In our campos it is a very common interaction, and if you happen to be introduced to a person in the Sierra and you don't get one upon parting or at re-encounter, you have seriously impaired interpersonal skills, so... revísate! I happen to get them every time, which I don't think is a testament to my affability and charm but to the openness and trusting nature of the Dominican campesino, particularly the Serrano.

I haven't gone back to see Doña Maria but I plan to, and I'm sure that when I do, if she is still there, and if she remembers me, I'll get my forearm shake.

By the way, that day I met her was Mother's Day and Doña Maria was alone.