Thursday, May 15, 2008
more BODY
- I love watching people look at themselves in shop windows. The undeniable draw of a vast expanse of reflective glass. The secret hope that the image will be different this time. The shy ones sneak peeks as they pass by, trying to keep their head movements casual, as if they just accidentally happened to come face to face with themselves and aren’t too bothered by it. The sexy ones slow down, prolonging the lusciously narcissistic moment, perhaps inviting others to look as well. With their subtle posture shifts and minor clothing adjustments, these window-watchers reveal the intimate connections they share with their inner most-beautiful selves, and their constant desire for others to see those selves instead of the ones with the sloped shoulders and the droopy buttocks. Where our bodies are concerned, we remain creatures of hope. Perhaps time is not marching forward in one direction. Perhaps the toll taken is still reversible. Perhaps I will look in the mirror today and discover again the 20-year girl – the one I left standing on a pedestal in Trafalgar square, wearing skinny jeans and a billowing electric blue blouse, hair flying in the breeze.
- I went to the tailor last week and left blushing. My post-partum body, which more closely resembles under-baked bread than supple sinewy flesh, requires clothes. I prefer that these clothes be comfortable, yet not completely matronly. I have two pairs of cute pants I wore in early pregnancy, and I thought with some alteration they might still work. I found the one tailor listed in my town and called to confirm the continued existence of the shop. A man with a lyrical Arabic accent answered and assured me he could take on the work. From the voice, I was picturing the tailor as a kindly Afghani man in his 60’s with twinkling eyes and grizzled hands, who would smile at the baby and treat me like a daughter. But when I stepped out of the blazing sunshine into the tiny shop, the man who greeted me was 25, slender and handsome, with piercing brown eyes. I immediately started to balk at the thought of showing off my mushy midriff to this fellow. I tried to talk my way out of actually trying on the pants, but in the end there was no help for it. He ushered me to an alcove with a curtain and waited for me to emerge. I stood facing the mirror, sucking in my stomach (kind of like trying to hide a watermelon in a change-purse), and standing stock still so that I would not make any more contact with him than was necessary. He stood behind me and carefully placed his hands on my hips, just above the drooping waistband. A whisper of warm skin. Gently he tugged the material this way and that, inserting pins. More touching, down the sides of my legs, the small of my back, my bum. Yikes. He worked slowly, clearly focused on getting it right, but maybe also (am I imagining this?) taking just a little more time than he needed. Either he enjoys the sensual nature of his job, or perhaps he perceived my discomfort and was teasing me a bit. Either way, it was sweet agony. And when at last I burst out of the shop back into the anonymous daylight, I was struck by how easily we are unhinged by the unexpected. The body’s appetites are unconcerned with gender, age, ethnicity or appropriateness. The body does not know that it is considered attractive or not by the culture in which it lives. The body doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
- Several times a day, I lie belly to belly with my daughter while she feeds. She curls into me and embeds her arms and legs into my flesh. I fold my arms around her and rest my face on top of her fuzzy head. Sometimes we fall asleep together in this embrace. Sometimes my bottom arm goes numb and I get a crick in my neck. Sometimes she wakes me with surprisingly forceful rabbit kicks to the gut. I know from experience that this sweet coupling will be exceptionally brief. In 4 months, 8 months, 12 months, she will be too big and too squirmy to cuddle with like this. In 4 years, 8 years, 12 years, she will be too much her own woman to let her Mama hold her. Time cannot be bargained with.
Be well.
Photo by susiejulie
Friday, March 14, 2008
The human body amazes me. As I watch my son’s and daughter’s bodies grow, I am continually astonished by the complex involuntary processes at work. Teeth form and push through skin at just the right moment. Fat converts to muscle that lengthens and strengthens as it is needed. Digestive tissue milks the perfect balance of nutrients from food to meet metabolic demand.
The body is smart too. It knows more than the mind does about what a human needs to thrive, causing pregnant women to crave oranges (the white inner skin is a cure for naseau) and sick children to eschew dairy products (which cause mucus production.) The body carries all the experiences and all the memories that the mind has no room for. Like a gentle grandmother, the body gathers up forgotten or abandoned bits of self, knowing that you might want or need them later.
During my last year of grad school, both my grandparents died. My grandfather’s passing was an expected culmination to a prolonged tango with diabetes that we were all prepared for. But my grandmother died more suddenly and more mysteriously six months later of “heart failure.” Her daughter has always said she died of a broken heart.
My heart broke too when she died. She was younger than my grandfather by 7 or 8 years, and I thought that fact, coupled with my searing love for her, would ensure that she would live long enough to see my children be born. I stumbled through the end of grad school, moved back to
But later that year, I had a massage. I was up at Harbin Hot Springs – an historic and hedonistic “clothing optional” retreat center in Northern California – with my good friend Artemis - the only person I could imagine enjoying being naked in public with! And this may actually have been the first massage I had ever had. The therapist started at my feet and made a slow and pleasant journey upward, paying extra attention to all my various trouble spots (“I’ve got really tight hamstrings….oh, my lower back is pretty tweaky…and I’ve got some scar tissue in my right shoulder…” etc.)
When she got to the back of my neck, she made a soft exhalation – a little sound of surprise. She said, “You’ve got quite a treasure trove here.” I loved that. The image that my knots and achy places were actually storehouses for important stuff my body was hanging on to. As she gently worked this spot, I started to cry. Then I started to sob. I cried and cried and cried. And the therapist never missed a beat. She just kept rubbing and kneading and breathing with me. “Oh,” I thought with sudden clarity, “that’s where I’m keeping my grandparents.”
The body knows. It knows when to hold ‘em, and it knows when to fold ‘em. For weeks, my body has been trying to get my attention with one complaint after another. My feet hurt when I get out of bed in the morning. My hips have been achy enough that I’m sleeping with a pillow between my knees, just like I did during pregnancy. All of my treasure spots have been sending out regular neural distress signals, like little homing beacons, whispering “here…here…look here…” So I finally got it together to visit a chiropractor this week. And just my luck, I picked the best one who ever practiced during the last 100 years. A gorgeous soft-spoken German woman with hands like fluttering doves. She spent an hour and a half with me during the first visit on Wednesday and 40 minutes with me today. She is not in a hurry. And she is not daunted by the vast amount of work that lies ahead to bring my body back into a state of alignment, harmony, and health.
In particular, she focused on gentle manipulations to my abdomen and my pelvis, which is surprisingly twisted and torqued, even considering what it’s been through lately. She’s also been working on relaxing the backs of my legs, which seem to still believe they have to work hard enough to keep me and the burden of my baby upright. In essence, my body is still behaving as though I’m pregnant. And I don’t think this is just standard post-partum repair work we’re doing here. I think that as chipper as I have been about the less-than-ideal experience of birthing Miss V, there are aspects of the trauma that have lodged themselves in my body, because there is something I need to know or learn about myself before I let them go.
So, I’m going to let the body take the lead for once (although I’m sure my brain will try to be a back-seat driver.) I’m going to keep visiting my chiropractor, do yoga, drink water, and lie around and look at the sky as much as I can. I think my life might depend on it. Not in the “I’m going to die young if I don’t do this” sense, but more in the “I’m going to wake up one day crushed under the weight of my own sadness” sense. Left to its own devices, grief tends to multiply, like mold in damp corners. What is a grain of grief right now may turn into a waving field of grief if ignored.
Grief. A word we seldom use, unless we have to. But like mold spores, it surrounds us and permeates us daily. Personal grief. Collective grief. Temporal and historical grief. And we make so little space for it, until we have to.
And you? What treasure stores does your body carry? What would happen if you took out those rusty keys and unlocked them one by one, took out the contents, and let it sift through your hands like fine pearls?
Be well.
photo by estherase
