Massage

VI

My cocoon tightens, colors tease,
I’m feeling for the air;
A dim capacity for wings
Degrades the dress I wear.

A power of butterfly must be
The aptitude to fly,
Meadows of majesty concedes
And easy sweeps of sky.

So I must baffle at the hint
And cipher at the sign,
And make much blunder, if at last
I take the clew divine. ---Emily Dickinson*

For Christmas, I got a spa package that included an hour of Swedish Massage. I've never really had a professional massage (there was the time a couple of years ago when our kooky friend the massage therapist gave us all massages for Christmas, but those were a little weird due to his having just broken up with this chick and being a little bit drunk, and I don't think they count).

Prenatal massages are a bit different. You can't, after all, lie on a tummy as glorious as this one. (Pictures will come soonish. Maybe after this weekend.) So you get all undressed and lie frontways on the table, covered in a floral sheet, with pillows under your knees, in the "mood lighting" darkness with new age music whistling flutes and waves crashing ambient noise in the background. Candles burning. Waiting for the young woman who is your massage person to come back in the room. It feels strangely like a combination of waiting for a lover and waiting for a doctor to come in for an exam. I giggled a little bit.

The therapist was very nice-- she was all excited about my tummy. The babies kicked in protest-- they always are active if I'm lying on my back. It probably squishes them or something. She thought my tummy's little Vesuvian mound was cute. I do too, actually.

She massaged me discretely-- under the sheet. Is that how they do it when you're on your tummy? Lift the sheet off of the part of the body currently being massaged? I felt a little bit like Emily Dickinson seeing her doctor. Legend has it she wouldn't let the doctor come too close, stood in the door with him across the room and said "you may examine me from there." No point in touching to make any diagnosis.... the lady was nuts. (But the nuts always write great poems.) I also have never seen a massage where the therapist was chatty. I didn't mind, but it did sort of distract me from thinking about the massage. That's about when it started to feel more like a haircut; gossipy, but still fun.

It was, I think, a great massage. Most of me was relaxed and noodle-y afterwards. My shoulders, though, which she worked on, digging her fingers into for a while, feel sore today. They felt even more sore last night while I was trying to settle down for sleep. Sort of the way I feel when I've done too many military presses with too much weight. But also a little bruised. I mentioned this to Andrew, who has never had a professional massage either, and he said "That's good, though, right?" I laughed and said "I dunno!"

So that's good, right? It means my formerly tense shoulders will be all relaxed and happy once they get used to being unknotted?

Next round in the spa day will be the European Facial. I feel a little like Samantha Brown, from Great Hotels, whose job I envy with a fervor that would surely land me in Hell for the strength of my covetousness were there any chance that I could ever be her.

*And no, the poem doesn't really have any relevance to the post. YOU try searching Dickinson for a poem about massage. I still like it, though. It's staying.