This week I attended a potluck. I planned to bring banana muffins, something I have been making since my oldest son still liked to lick the bowl. My cookbook, which I only take out for nostalgia's sake, and to get the proportions right, is gummy with use. The ingredients I know by heart. It falls open to the banana bread page. The event started at six, and at four I still had not started pulling flour and brown sugar from the pantry. The delay was not procrastination. I wanted them to be warm when I walked through the door. 

Yesterday a friend came to buy eggs, and there was not quite a dozen. I quickly went out to the coops and nestled in the wood shavings was a pair of eggs. One was brown, another white, from my most faithful layers. They were still warm. 

I held them in my cupped hands as I walked back to the house, and pictured that only minutes before they were still inside the chickens. Warmed by their bodies. And here they were, gifted to me as thanks for bringing the hens corn each day.  A sweet exchange. 

Warmth is invisible. It has no smell. Makes no sound. And yet the sensation of holding a warm egg, or biting into a warm muffin satisfies me. Perhaps it is because it reassures me that the muffin, and the egg are fresh. They have not waited in limbo in a grocery store, or eighteen wheeler for days or weeks.

Holding the hands of the people we love is one of life's delicacies.  I don't need a research paper to convince me that the warmth of human skin has miraculous properties. Maybe part of its appeal is knowing that this touch is fresh, heated by the heart that has not yet forgotten me.