Books, Covers, Hands, Rubbers

About twice a year, I book an appointment for a massage in hopes that I will hobble into the hands of a holistic healer who will knead and work and rub out a sweeping cycle of chronic pain.  I check in, peel off my clothes, slip under a blanket and wait for the New Age sets and scents to wrap around me.  Enya’s soothing sounds beckon me to unwind.  The lavender drifting through the air and the gentle flicker of the soy candles beg me to relax.  But I can’t.  My mind rings up ridiculous scenarios and reactions like a cash register at Christmas time.  What will I do if there is a fire?  Do they really change the sheets between clients?  Bed bugs!  Are there bed bugs burrowing into the fibers of the organic coverlet?  Oh my God, what’s that itch?  Will the masseur return to see a stark naked silhouette spastically scratching her ankle?   Will the hot stones scald me this time, too?   I should have shaved my legs.  Will the lotion make those awkward wet slurping and farting noises?  Will I keep it together if the masseur says the word buttocks out loud or will it be like that time I got the giggles so badly in the visualization segment of birthing class that I had to bury my face in my lumbar support pillow so I wouldn’t wreck the mood for the rest of mothers-to-be?  Probably something more like the latter.   

Recently the doctor prescribed regular massage therapy for me.  I immediately scheduled a treatment, preferring a natural approach to the muscle relaxant and pain killer cocktail that was also prescribed.  Last week my journey back to the land of loose limbs and ligaments began with the receptionist ushering me into a room of grand Zen impression.  My joints creaked and cracked (I sounded like Rice Krispies when milk hits them) as I heaved my body up on the table and worked my way under the thin layers of linen and cotton.  Goosebumps broke across my bare shoulders, for I was too tall to pull the blanket over them.  I willed myself not to go down the path of what if, but the mental levees were breaking under the hurricane-force of my anxiety.  Time passed.  I don’t know how much because my watch was too far across the room, along with every other article and accessory that had given me security and coverage just minutes earlier.  I felt vulnerable, lying there, nude; the tension was multiplying at rabbit-speed.  What if, what if, what if.  Finally, the doorknob turned and in lumbered Mark. 

He padded in with a palpable heaviness and immediately ran into a stool which rolled into a rack bearing vials, vessels and votives, some of which clinked and clattered to the floor.  There was a clumsiness and sloppiness about him that severely challenged the clean, crisp lines of the setting.  His black shirt stretched over the pudgy expanse of his midsection, the buttons straining to stay fastened, the last few having surrendered their posts, revealing belly flesh that reminded me of Pillsbury’s poppin’ fresh dough.  His hair was slicked back into a long, wet salt-and-pepper tail that was definitively more rat than pony.  Static electricity made his dark pants cleave and hitch and rise in strange ways, and tattered, grayish gym socks crept out of his Birkenstocks. 

Nervously, I stretched my arm out to shake his hand by way of introduction.  From my somewhat limited experience, the handshake of the masseur has always been the tell for how the ensuing treatment would unfold.  Mark took my long, cold, arthritic fingers into his thick, soft palms.  He did not shake or squeeze, just cupped my hand in not one, but both of his.  At first, I thought, “Oh no, it’s the energy handshake, not the energy handshake.”  In the past, this type of we-are-one-with-the-universe gesture has resulted in a somewhat sympathetic rubdown where the pressure is delicate and cautious, leaving me feeling like I have been given a conciliatory pat on the back.  I needed to be unknotted.  I needed a take-no-prisoners approach to my trigger points, a dig in so I could dig out.  I began to worry about being at the mercy of Mark’s meaty mitts, even if he did seem so well-meaning.

After reviewing my history and symptoms (which left me feeling like I should have checked into a nursing home rather than a spa), I turned my head into the face rest, took in the aromatics and noted a ribbon of mint running through the lavender.  Mark put his hands on the back of my skull and pressed down.  Reflexively, I pushed back into his palms.  He said, “Sydney, this will only work, if you let it work.  Let It Work.”  What I heard though was Tom Cruise’s Jerry Maguire yelling at Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s Rod Tidwell, “Help Me Help You!  Help Me Help You!”  I am sure I tried to stifle a snicker, which made my shoulders shake a little, giving a clear indication that I was still spinning on something, still unsettled.  Mark’s hands never left my head.  Neither his pressure nor tone changed.  He just leaned in and said, “Let it work.  Let it work, Sydney.” 

I heard silence.  It sounded like breath, like labored breathing steadying into a more natural and graceful pace.  For a moment I could feel the pressure of Mark’s digits distinctly, ten points across my head, but then they blurred and I felt only a singular firmness, a fixed and fixing force pushing on me, on my mind and my body.  “Let it work.  Let it work, Sydney.”  His voice did not match his visage, nor did his fluid, slow, deep strokes once they began working my neck and shoulders.  Mark uncovered me down to my fading tan line, and I quietly lamented the vanishing traces of summer and remembered July as the last time spinning my children around, or just carrying them, didn’t brutalize my joints and muscles.  As if he could somehow hear my inner monologue, Mark again laid his hands on my head, paused, pressed, pushed with the heft of his whole body and somehow shifted my sadness back to silence.  For sixty minutes he continued to work like this: an elongated, smooth and specific rub, followed by a pause, then listening, adjusting, turning, pushing and stretching me.  In the darkness, Mark was less masseur and more an old, soulful musician, a master from another time, tuning a dusty, tired, and tangled instrument.  Patient and persistent, he continued to tweak, strum and listen…tweak, strum and listen.  He seemed to know what the instrument didn’t know.  She not only could, but would, sing again.

Mark didn’t heal me that day, but he did move my pain to the side and more importantly, pushed me out of my own way, cleared the path, so to speak.  As he was leaving, he told me not to rush, and I regretted that earlier I had done just that, rushed to the appointment, rushed to get under the covers, even rushed to judgment.  Stretched out and chilled out, alone again in the room, I realized that Mark, with all of his hairy, fleshy, unkempt humanity hanging out was an authentic keeper of comfort and calm.  The elaborately crafted zone of Zen was but a Feng Shui fabrication.

I booked my next appointment.


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Dish out some happy and be kind, good people.  More later.

Scattered, Together

Last week I told Jonathan that I wanted to scatter the ashes of two of our dogs along the banks of the James.  I had in my head that we would zip our coats, pull on old boots and skip down to the river’s edge, with Eli and Syd kicking up autumn leaves along the way.  Further, I had thought about what I might say to honor my fallen canines and how I might explain to my children the significance of returning Molly-Girl and Big Mason to the trails they loved to traipse and the waters in which they splashed and swam so zealously in life.  In my mind’s rehearsal, the splendid Fall foliage, crisp breeze and rapids lapping the rocks could have been the myriad colors, breaths and loving licks that my old hound and peculiar cattle dog shared with us through the years.

On Sunday, the careful and complete deconstruction of my poetic vision of remembrance began early. I trumpeted to the troops to pull it together for the excursion.  Syd responded by thrashing on the floor over the fit, or rather ill-fit of her denim capris, and she hurled a hand-me-down tennis shoe in my direction when I offered assistance with the laces.  The mere mention of sporting a jacket incited her further.  I thought to check her forehead for the famed “666” skin tattoo, but I didn’t want to get that close to the writhing heap on the hardwoods lest it start snarling and spitting and striking.  Meanwhile, Eli asked me no less than twenty-two times if we could fish once we got there, and he also wanted to wear his trunks as it had been a stretch since he had waded in the waters.  Given that it was forty degrees (if that) and we had not one, but two dogs to memorialize, my answer to my son’s relentless requests remained a fixed and firm no, though I secretly admired both his enthusiasm and determination.  Downstairs I could hear Jonathan jingling the keys, signaling that he was ready to roll the train forward, and probably had been for quite some time. 

Finally, the Petty Four piled into the car and began the journey.  Jonathan asked if I wanted to explain to the kids what we were doing.  I put the two urns full of ashes on the floor, inhaled deeply and turned to look at Eli and Syd.  I explained that we were taking Molly-Girl, one of their dogs, and Big Mason, my old rescued greyhound who they hadn’t met, back to their favorite spot for dashing and dipping.  Thus, in the future whenever we raced down the dirt paths, jumped along the flat rocks or swam in the water, our four-legged, furry friends would be with us, too.  I asked my children to think of what they might say as part of our makeshift tribute.  Eli spoke of his love for Molly, but worried that he might not be able to say much about the dog he never knew.  Syd asked if cats liked to swim, too.  In those moments I was grateful to have on oversized sunglasses to hide the tears welling in my eyes.  I am proud of how my children handled the concept of death, and I am awed by their takes on life and living.  The elder is a peaceful little warrior; he seems to build on the past and hold lives lost in his six-year-old heart.  But I like Syd’s approach, too.  She is a little life drinker, a keep-a’goin’-what’s-next-kind-of-gal.  As usual, the students were teaching the teacher.

We parked, climbed through the gates at the 42^nd Street access and spilled down to the trail in the chilly morning air.  We made our way to a quiet, open spot on the river.  When we took out Molly’s ashes, the kids’ level of interest heightened like some magic was underway.  Eli and Syd said their goodbyes and I love yous and each took a turn pouring dust from the plastic bag before bounding down the bank.  Jonathan shared his thoughts, too, but I couldn’t seem to find the words about my little dog’s kindness, propeller-like tail wag and her patience with my children.  Instead, I was cracking up at the amount of ash now covering my jeans and boots thanks to the wind, and I was fearful that Eli and/or Syd were soon to fall in the frigid waters as they precariously perched two rocks over and launched boulders into the gentle rapids.

When we got to Big Mason, a courageous, giant, fawn greyhound who heroically battled cancer and an amputated leg, among other amazing trials, I was shaking partly from the low temperature, partly from raw emotion and partly with laughter because Eli had reappeared, taken the urn, and was feverishly dumping it, without fanfare, into the river.  I remembered Jonathan telling Eli to let me scatter some, too, for Mason was my dog, but I also remembered not pushing to do so.  I had already let go, fully surrendered.

By that time, Syd’s zipper had broken; a thorn had scraped her cheek, and streams of mucus poured from her nose.  Jonathan had stepped into the river accidentally, while trying to keep her from falling in.  Eli was still talking about fishing.  And I was covered in the ashes of two dead dogs.  We trekked back to the car and rolled homeward – snotty, bloody, cold, muddy, wet, and dusty, but already talking about our next adventure together, one likely to be every bit as scattered.

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Dish out some happy and be kind, good people.  More later.