Skip to main content

Tidings of Comfort and Joy...Mama Needs Massage

It’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m naked, save for underwear, lying beneath a clean-smelling bath sheet, knees slightly elevated above a rolled towel. I shut my eyes to block the outside world, to abide in bliss’s bubble as completely as possible.

The occasional sound of an airplane outside fills my ears. Inside, Dido sings Here With Me from a CD player. But mostly, my head resonates and buzzes – vibrating with comfort and joy. 

My friend, Louise runs her business (called Divine MassageTherapy), from a purpose-built room in the bottom level of her home. She rakes long, strong fingers through my hair, from the crown of my head to the nape of my neck. This sends squiggles of pleasure swimming down my neck, through my torso, along my legs, to my toe-tips. It’s like the kindest, gentlest electrocution you can imagine: my head is the current’s entry point; my feet provide the exit.

Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop…

This is my massage mantra. And Louise gives great massage. If you’ve been on a table or twelve, you learn about therapists’ styles: not-great ones are talkers, or their hands feel weak and puny, or the massage doesn’t flow from one body part to the next. Louise commits none of these sins. She’s tall (maybe five foot ten?) and strong: if you say you’d like more pressure (she asks whether pressure needs adjusting), by golly, you’ll get more. And if delivering more pressure is taxing or exhausting, she’ll never let on.

I smile when I think about another experience my friend persuaded me try, called Hot Yoga. I called it Ninety Minutes in Hell. (read about it here  : http://pickendawn.blogspot.co.nz/2011/09/not-so-hot-yoga.html  )

This is Hot Yoga’s antithesis: Moderate Temperature Massage. No beads of sweat, just blossoms of love efflorescing along my spine. I know God loves me because She invented healing touch and inspired people to become damn good at the craft. The late chess master Bobby Fischer was right when he said, “Nothing eases suffering like human touch.”

Louise’s hands move from my scalp to the meaty parts between my shoulders. She slides her coconut-oiled hands down, cups her fingers slightly, applies pressure and pulls up.

Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop…

The power surge resumes, current running in a loop from shoulders to feet, shoulders to feet…

I didn’t think I had time for this: It’s the end of the school year, and everything’s happening at once – in a single month, I got engaged and started planning a wedding to be held in three months; sold my house in Spokane; finished the rough draft of the memoir; spent hours planning and teaching a social media class… all while taxiing my small fries to swimming, Girl Guides, tennis, drama, soccer, church, play dates…

I also work twenty hours a week at my church, which is whipping itself into a pre-Christmas lather with end-of-year events, parties, extra services, a pageant, etc, etc…

Can we skip Christmas this year? Please? Please?

Arghhhhh!!!

I don’t have time for massage, which is exactly why I’m here.

Louise presses into my hip, kneading, pulling and stroking like I’m a lump of dough who forgets to stretch after she runs (admission: I rarely stretch after I run).

“You runners are really tight through the hips,” she says.

Uh-huh.

Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop…

As I lay face-up, Monkey Mind starts whirring: What to make for dinner tonight? Do the kids have play dates? I must call to price a lamb for the wedding lunch…

It’s my hour on this table. I can think about whatever I want. Must I continue list-making?

No. If there’s any time to reside in the moment, it’s now.

Louise kneads my calves, returning me to right here, right now.  Oh, they’re tight. She tries coaxing the turnips on the back of my legs to unclench. Pleasure, then challenge. Pleasure, challenge.  Yin, yang.  It’s not effortless to lie here, but the legs need work.

Okay, give up on the calves.

She moves onto my hands, pressing and working into medium effleurage. This is unlike the challenge of clenched calves. I revert to my favorite prone position: a yielding mass of muscles, bone and flesh.

Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop…

The finishing flourish happens at my head, the place that reverberates with electricity and pleasure so intense, I check to ensure I haven’t yelped in ecstasy.

Did I say something? I didn’t make any sound, did I? Maybe I started to snore…

You know it’s coming – the moment when, as you’re lying on the table, the therapist says, “There you go. How was that?”

Oh, now you’ve stopped…Don’t leave me!

I croak out something like “fan-stick,” which hopefully can be interpreted as “fantastic.”

Louise leaves me to (slowly) sit up and get dressed. I lie for a moment, thinking that things for which we ‘don’t have time’ – exercise, writing, massage, meditation, prayer – are exactly what we need.

Especially now. Especially at Christmas.

John Keats said “touch has a memory.” I want my being imprinted with the memory of massage.

Comments

  1. What a perfect perfect description. So wonderful that you allowed yourself this therapeutic wonderful pleasure.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can feel it, Dawn. It seems like I was the one being massaged! Haha! It really feels relaxing to get a massage after a very stressful week of working, doesn't it?

    Wilfred @KivaDaySpa.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Murder House

Murder House (MUH-dah House) The deed is done              “I don’t wanna go to the dentist. It’s gonna hurt,” says Fiona. I can hardly deny my eight-year-old the truth, but I can tiptoe around it.             “They’re going to rub medicine on your gums to numb them,” I tell her. “And they can put your tooth to sleep with a needle.”             Fiona gasps, “I don’t want a needle! No!” Oops. I shouldn’t have used the “n” word. Fiona starts her high-pitched screeching if she thinks a needle exists in the next room. When I got the kids immunized in preparation for dragging them round-the-world, Fiona cried as the nurse swabbed her upper arm with iodine. You would’ve thought someone was whacking off her limb with a rusty saw, yet the needle lay feet from Fiona’s body. New Zealand is not the place for dental work for a squeamish, sobbing little girl. I learned after bringing Fiona to a dental clinic during the Christmas school vacation (otherwise known as summer holidays) that sch

Ten Years On

Ten Years On Our ten-year wedding anniversary, Dec 3, 2009 Scattering ashes in Michigan, August, 2010 January 23, 2010 is a date I'm afraid to remember and scared I'll forget. It's the day Sean died. I wanted to write about the weirdness of marking ten years since Sean’s death, but it’s almost too big a task. It’s like straining to hear what my kids are asking from the other room while the kettle is boiling in front of me; like trying to figure out how to build a bookshelf when the instructions are cryptic pictograms.  How to talk about a decade of living, loving, grieving? It’s like a trip to the moon and back ten times and also like a walk to the corner store. It has been a long odyssey and a quick jaunt. What no one can tell you about the years stretching between death and this-new-normal-kinda-life is how your perspective will change. What once seemed important now seems trivial, and the person you were back then is different from

The Affair

The Affair Ohope Beach, NZ I had an affair last week. I’m not ashamed to tell you, either. It was sweet and sad. It made me laugh, cry, sigh and dance in my chair to James Brown and Rupert Holmes. My Kiwi PAHT-nah, Pete, even facilitated the tryst, though neither of us knew what to expect beforehand. Pete watched the kids while I was gone for five nights. Five whole nights.  No kids. No TV. No partner.  I enjoyed a dalliance with my late husband, Sean (though I should write instead, ‘dead husband,’ because Sean hated being late). It happened in a wood-paneled house across the street from the ocean, in Ohope Beach, New Zealand. I attended a writer’s retreat to work on the memoir. I revised six sections totaling more than 40,000 words. In the course of revising- subtracting old text and adding entries from letters Sean had written me when we first started dating, plus journal entries he wrote around the time Fiona was born - I fell in love again. With Sean’s openn