These hands

I don't like the title "masseuse." Even "massage therapist" is a little sketchy, and "bodyworker" is way too open a description. What I do is so far from the tawdry stuff that happens in massage parlors in Vegas and the seedier parts of big cities. We need a new job title. Or better yet, the sex workers do.

I love my job. I'm not sure what took me so long to come back to massage. I went to school for massage seven years ago, went straight to work in a spa in Colorado, which was the best thing I could have done while everything was still fresh from school. I really got to put into action everything I'd learned and get that great body-memory going, where I don't have to think about what I'm doing, the knowledge and ability are present in the body as well as the brain. On the way back from CO for river season, I got pregnant. River season happened, then baby season, and maddage was puched to the back burner. And there certainly has been a "before and after" mentality with having kids. But a lot of it is fading - in a great way. I'm re-owning parts of myself that were there before kids and I kind of forgot about. Like massage. Maybe I'm far enough away from having my body owned by babies to feel like I can access it's other skills. Running a marathon last summer was part of the journey back. As was acting again the year before. Now I've got massage again - not that I ever stopped, but I sure slowed down a lot, and for good reason. Having children has given me a deeper connection to my own body, and an even greater admiration for what the human body can accomplish (and how it can hurt, mend, heal, recover). Seeing bodies in miniature and watching them grow at rapid speed is a pretty great opportunity to remember all that anatomy as well.

The main benefactors of massage in the intervening years have been my parents - my mom and my stepfather anyway - and my siblings. That's been great, actually. Today for the first time I gave my dad and his wife massages. My dad isn't exactly a massage devotee. I'm pretty sure he was voted "tightest hamstrings in the world" for about 57 consecutive years. My younger sister went with him to his first ever massage about a year ago. Here's how she described it: "The massage therapist said he did great. After 45 minutes he actually even started to relax - a little." Getting him on the table took some coaching and then I just resorted to firmness as we do with the kids. "Get on the table, Dad." And it went pretty well. I can hear people saying 'eeeew, that's wierd." But it's not. My dad is a doctor. All my life he's been sticking flashlights down my throat and soemtimes even jumbo q-tips for throat cultures. (He called it "the stick." I'm going to have to start calling massage something, too: "the table." I need ideas.) If my dad wasn't a doctor and stuck q-tips down my throat anyway, you'd be right to think that was freaky. But this was pretty cool. He's been dealing with some spinal and nerve and muscle issues for a long time and we were really able to talk a lot about it, to make some progress. It was really very satisfying to be able to give my dad advice, to be going over anatomy with him and offer him options that might alleviate some of his pain.

It was great to work on his wife, too. Decadent, she called it. I really feel that massage is another way we have of communicating - like music. She is a musician and owns that as a wonderful gift to offer others. Massage is a form of communication as well - not only of massage therapist to recipient, but of that recipient to be in communication with his or her own body. We are often so cut off between our body and our mind and it's great to be able to bring that consciousness about.

I've been working mostly at a chiropractor's office - a wonderful chiropractor who has helped me immensely and whom I adore - he and his whole wonderful family. It's been a wonderful opportunity to get reacquainted with massage, and working with people actively seeking relief from a doctor affords me a wonderful oportunity to approach massage as a concrete way to make a marked difference for someone in that interaction.

In fact, with so many new people I'm working on these days, it's something of a decadence to work on my family. My mom and stepfather took all the kids and partners and grandkids to Mexico for a week to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday. It was an amazing trip. In Mexico I finally got to work a lot with my brother-in-law, Ryan. That Allison and Ryan could make it was amazing. He was in pretty rough shape the whole trip. Terminal cancer will do that. To be able to give some pleasure, to alleviate some pain was pretty great in a totally selfish way, for me. It's easy to feel useless on the face of something like this, to want to do something but to feel powerless. And I got to make him feel good, a bit. He even had that look of being blissed out after a great session that ended with a scalp and face massage. And it wasn't from the morphine! I gave my sister a massage (ok, I just checked and this is going ot sound so weird, but it's not!) while he was lying next to her in their bed. Pretty cool, just hanging out together, all of us chatting, but giving her some relief from the stress that hs permeated her life these last months (and years, really), and he being able to be present for it. Witnessing. It was really important for her that we were witness to what the cancer has done to him. and it alleviated her despair and loneliness in the face of it. But writing about this, it occurs to me that it was equally important for him to witness her experiencing pleasure and vice versa. Comfort. (Man, it's hard to write words associated with massage and not have them sound potentially sketchy. Sigh.)

I love working on my entire family, even my other brother-in-law who complained, but whose neck hurt so much he had to go under the hands for a bit. I have massged my mother-in-law, and that was a pretty amazing step in our relationship.

Another massage experience that has been really rewarding has been working with my friend Spencer. He's the biker daddy fighting multiple myeloma who is a good friend. Hidden bonuses of that have been great adult conversation with a friend, great music, adn the chance to actually help in a productive way. And his wife always thanks me for the sessions as well, says the next 24-48 hours are better for her as well. For me it's been pretty amazing to bear witness to how his body has changed in the weeks I've been working with him - this incredible deciline the first three weeks in diagnosis, and then this plateau in terms of physical decline, but a myriad of other changes as drugs to fight the cancer and fight the symptoms caused by the drugs to fight the cancer flood the healthy and unhealthy parts of the body and wreak their havok. It's good to bear witness to his physical fight as well.

I like this job. I don't say that a lot, unequivocally. There's usually a caveat, a "but" that reveals the negative. The thing I haven't liked about so many jobs - I think WHY i've had so many jobs, is the lack of feeling like I'm actually DOING anything. Executive search - some moments of job satisfaction but a lot of frustration. Marketing river trips? A lot of spinning wheels. Selling truck parts? Do the math. Acting - in plays and in the rare good film or tv experience I had - is very satisfying. Doing the crap stuff not at all. And I don't have time anymore for doing the crap stuff in anything. I like having a job where I get concrete positive results every day. I love that I facilitate people coming back into relationship with their physical being in a positive way, allowing them to experience positive feelings from their bodies I think helps us reclaim ownership of them - bearing witness to our own selves.

I am awed by Ryan and by Spencer and by what their bodies endure, and that they don't let it weaken their spirits but in fact strengthen them. I am grateful for the oportunity to let others reconnect with their bodies, grateful to feel of use in how I spend my time helping to support my family. I am proud to bear witness to all of the people I serve and humbled by their presence and belief. In "My Grandfather's Blessings", Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. writes ""Perhaps we can only truly serve those we are willing to touch, not only with our hands but with our hearts and even our souls. Professionalism has embedded in service a sense of difference, a certain distance. But on the deepest level, service is an experience of belonging, an experience of connection to others and to the world around us. It is this connection that gives us the power to bless the life in others. Without it, the life in them would not respond to us."

When I put suncscreen on my children I call it a massage. It becomes less something I am forcing on them and more of something we are doing together, soemthing that we enjoy simultaneously. When I am thanked for a massage by someone, my immediate reaction is always to thank them - genuinely. It is rare that someone believes that the experience benefitted me as well. But it does. Should I ever feel resentful of "having" to do a massage, I will know it is time to walk away from it. For now I am staying, firmly rooted in the joy.