Korean Spa

A couple weeks ago, I rearranged therapist appointments and school tours, postponed insurance claim calls, ditched the dishes and the laundry, left the suburbs behind and ventured into San Francisco for something different.

I’m not generally a spa person.  I’ve had about five pedicures in my life, I prefer my massages medicinal, I don’t like the feeling of someone waiting on me in that way, pampering me, simply because I’m paying for it.  Perhaps because I spent my twenties waiting on people because they were paying me for it.  It all makes me highly uncomfortable.

This spa, though, this Korean spa to which I was heading, is, I’d heard, not about pampering.  That theory proved true.

I embarked on this adventure with my friend, Mary.  There are probably only a handful of people with whom I could imagine spending three hours naked and Mary is one of them.  She is six feet tall and the definitive ectomorph.  Tan, blonde, gi-orgeous.  While I’ve often compared myself to Mary physically and found myself wanting (once she chopped her hair short and dyed it brown, almost my exact cut, and I found myself thinking, “Oh, look, it’s me, only taller and thinner”), she is a person who is at home in her body.  Which I suppose I am, too, most days.  Being naked with someone like that is a lot like being naked alone, except you can chat.

We disrobed in the clean, chlorine-scented locker room.  Dressed only in our spa-provided bracelets (Mary’s said “4”, mine “5”), we sank into the hot tub while we waited for our scrub appointments.  As we sloshed from hot tub to cold plunge, we whispered compliments about each other’s breasts (“God, Mary, you look like you’re sixteen.” “Your boobs are so full and nice, Liz.”).  Yes, guys, this is what ladies talk about.

Soon a squat, middle-aged Korean woman uniformed in black granny undies and bra (truly, that’s the uniform) entered the bath area. 

“Four?” she called in heavily accented English.  Mary dutifully followed her, smiling at me over her bare shoulder.

Soon enough, another squat, middle-aged Korean woman in requisite black undies and bra arrived.

“Five?” she asked gruffly.

I followed her into a small curtained annex off the bathing area.  She gestured for me to lie down on a massage table covered in heavy plastic. 

“Down,” she said.  Guessing, I lay face down.  A moment later, I was attacked.  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of her hand in some kind of glove.  It was a hybrid shower-glove/brillo-pad/oven mitt.  She held me down with one mitt and scrubbed me with the other, exactly how I might imagine her getting a stain out of her living-room carpet.

This went on for at least a half hour, her furious scrubbing.  Once she’d finished a body part, she’d dump a bucket of water on it.  There was no talking as we didn’t share a language, only her hands flipping me over and scrubbing.  Legs, back, belly, breasts, arm, armpits, everything.  I was a little concerned she was taking off more than the desired one layer of skin.  I was silently saying farewell to my nipples.  And I was laughing.  Forty-two year-old white suburban mom naked on a plastic sheet, totally at the mercy of a determined Asian woman in black underwear.

Upon release by my Brillo-mitted captor, I reunited with a dazed and pink Mary.  Then, again, two more Korean ladies entered the bath.  “Four?” one said.  “Five?” said the other.  Mary and I had time for one shared eyebrow raise before we were ushered into separate, tiny massage rooms. 

This Korean lady, my masseuse, was younger, smaller and infinitely more smiley than my scrubber.  She gestured for me to lie down on yet another massage table, this one, happily, covered with a sheet – cotton not plastic.

I closed my eyes and listened to the plink-plonk of the music coming from a small boom-box by my head.  And then I was attacked again.

Somehow, this sweet little lady had massive, super-human hands.  She kneaded my thighs and my calves with such force that I worried that my kneecaps would splinter. 

“You walk?” she asked.

“Um,” I squeaked, “Yeah.  I run.  In the hills.”

“Maybe no walk,” she said.  “Tight.”

It wasn’t until she got to my upper back and I felt the air forced from my lungs that I realized that what I had taken for hands were actually feet.  I listened over the sound of my wheezing breath and could hear her hands sliding on metal, what would later prove to be a horizontal pole above us.  She was walking on me.

After thirty minutes, she finally jumped off the table and switched to her hands.  I fell immediately asleep.  Or maybe I passed out.

When I came to and exchanged smiling nods with the Walker, I found Mary in the hall.  She looked about how I felt, beaten and raw.

We found a ramen shop next door for lunch and we toasted our shared Sapporo, grateful for our intact bones.  Mary confessed that her rib might be out.

I felt exorcised.  If the purpose of a massage, of a spa, is stress relief, this was mission accomplished.  I drove back over the Golden Gate skinned and mellow.  Maybe it was the scrubbing, maybe it was the walking, maybe it was just the laughing.  Whatever it was, I needed it.

The Crab

I am a person who is rarely still.  I’m industrious, I’m a multi-tasker; I’m the mother of three children.  In the rare moments I’m sitting, I’m eating and reading or eating and talking or sewing and listening to NPR or folding laundry and watching trash TV; there is always something being accomplished.

The exception to this rule is the first half-hour of my day.  That, ideally, is spent on my back, gazing through the skylight, watching the sunlight creep down the trees, sorting through my dreams.  My dreams are vivid and they are many.  Lately I’ve spent a lot of the night apartment-hunting in LA until I realize, whoops, I’m married, have three kids, three cats and a dog - a studio apartment is probably not going to do the trick.  When I finally emerge into consciousness, I am exceedingly vulnerable; if I’m down this is when I’ll feel it, if something is bothering me, this is when it’ll come up.  I am, as Ben says, a crab without its shell.

If I start my day in first gear, Mihiretu starts his in fifth.  From the moment he opens his eyes, he is running, he is talking, he is shouting, he is asking questions and making demands. This morning, he asked me in quick succession if I loved him more than Sunny, if it was the weekend, if I had any dreams, if we were going to walk to school, if we were having tacos for dinner, and if I loved him more than the IPad.  Sometimes, if he’s not in a great mood, he might call the sleeping dog onto the bed (where she is forbidden to go), he might shriek just to shriek and when asked to stop because his sisters are sleeping, shriek some more.  If Lana makes it to my bed first, they will fight over my hands – who gets to hold which one.  For someone who’s hardest moment of the day is leaving her bed, this kind of energy is a lot for me to handle.  I am the raw, shell-less crab and he is a sharp stick.

For as early as I rise, I guess I’m not a morning person.  If I had my way, the kids would wake up two hours later than I do – by that time, armed with coffee and warmed blood, I’d have the fortitude to face them.  I love them, these children, I love the fresh day, I love this life of mine but sometimes all I want to do is sleep – escape down the dark, velvety tunnel of my subconscious, float there, dream.

The Littlest Bachelor

Ben was away this week.  His absence somehow corresponded with the week a month the babysitter takes off and (how? how?) the aide’s car breaking down.  No Ben, no babysitter, no aide.  I relaxed my standards a bit.

Usually, six o’clock finds us sitting down to dinner at a candlelit table, giving our high points and low points (often pitching our voices above Mihiretu’s but no matter).  This last week it found us (minus Ben) draped on the couch, Mihiretu with earphones and Yu-Gi-Oh on the iPad, the girls and I dug deep into trashy television.

Sunday night was the Golden Globes.  Great fun for all, plus a teaching moment when Jodie Foster came out (me: “Girls, do you know what just happened?”  Mae:  a firm “Yes” and then “What?” me: long explanation of Jodie Foster’s path, the meaning of an open secret, etc.)

Tuesday night we watched the tivoed “The Bachelor”.  Please hold your calls and letters – I know, terrible, terrible thing for young girls to watch.  Ridiculously sexist, absurdly unrealistic view of love and marriage, basically a female orgy with one very lucky guy in the middle of it.  The girls have received a long mom lecture on my opinions on relationships, on romantic ideals versus true everyday love, on how this TV show is total horseshit but also so very fun to watch.

So we were watching, the girls and I, chomping our popcorn, sipping our wine (okay, that was me), discussing how very articulate was the one-armed girl in addressing her disability, when Mihiretu, settled in the crook of my arm, peeled off his headphones and pushed the iPad aside.  This, usually, would be when the happy scene crumbled.  Mihiretu, tired at the end of the day, at loose ends while the girls and I watch something on TV in which he has no interest.

But this boy, who takes his television straight-up animated, watched raptly, silently, for a good five minutes before asking, “That girl gonna get a wose, Mama?”  I said that, no, it looked like that girl was not going to get a rose, that girl was headed home, it seemed.  “Good,” he said with a quick nod of his head, “I no like her.”  I had to say, I agreed.

He finished out the show with us.  It was utterly delightful.  Later, when I told Ben, he said, of course, it’s about romance with lots of pretty ladies, right up his alley.  Plus, all that cleavage.  Really, what’s not to love?

What Doesn't Kill You

We five Caprons, do not, thank God, live in 1930’s Germany, or, thank God, Rwanda in the nineties, or, thank God, Syria in 2013.  We do, however, seem to have a lot more discomfort than most of our direct peers.  Our direct peers, of course, are highly educated, highly privileged, gorgeous, fit, middle-aged white folks.  They, like we were just a few years ago, are pursuing their careers, raising their children, sure working to varying degrees to keep finances afloat, to keep marriages afloat, but generally, life here in Marin is pretty fine.  Our problems are first-world problems, to be sure.

We five Caprons live in the perfect storm that is Hurricane Mihiretu (and yes, I include him in the number being oppressed by his behavior, much of which he can’t control).  We are awakened at odd hours by screaming and tantrums, we are in constant terrorist negotiations, we’re giving everything we have to this needy boy and it’s still not enough.  No it’s not Hitler’s Germany but it’s tough.

I’ve been feeling guilty lately about how all this domestic conflict is affecting the girls.  They didn’t ask for another sibling, they certainly didn’t ask to be tortured by said sibling.  But I heard something recently that gave me a bit of perspective.  It was NPR, part of the white noise of my day, I have no idea of the context but here’s the essence: Just because it’s not making you happy doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

I think we privileged white people get really caught up in our own happiness.  If we’re not happy, we’re failing.  I’ve been feeling like quite the failure lately.  But this mothering I’m doing, this non-stop chore of loving a boy that often does everything he can to repel that love, it is worth doing.  And, for all my faults, I am a good mother.  I have that to give to the world. 

A friend read a recent post and shared her experience of growing up with an adopted Columbian brother – a boy who came to her family at six with plenty of history.  She said that, yes, being his sister has had its challenges, but that the experience has taught her so many things, deepened her in a way that she might not have been otherwise.  She’s a doctor now and she said that her brother taught her compassion, which is essential in her work, essential to her life.

Perhaps my girls are learning lessons they wouldn’t have learned had we not brought Mihiretu into our lives.  We are giving them depth if nothing else.  They know what hardship is – theoretically from Mihiretu’s story before he came to us and realistically from living with him.  They know, first-hand, what malnutrition is, what global inequity is, that really hard things can happen, even to kids.

So maybe we five Caprons are a bit miserable at the moment.  Maybe we’ll continue to be for years.  But maybe that’s not the worst thing that could happen to a person.

Calling All Cars

It’s been so long since I’ve written here. The last three months have possibly been the most challenging with Mihiretu yet. That said, I’m caught in a conundrum.  While I so want to share our story because I know there are many people out there who might get something out of it – adoptive parents, parents of kids with special needs, parents of adopted kids with special needs, parents, people who grew up feeling different, anyone who’s ever faced what seemed like an insurmountable hurdle, okay, ANYONE – while I know this story is well worth telling, I don’t want to tell more than Mihiretu, the future Mihiretu, would want me to tell.  He might not grow up to be a blabber-mouth like his mother.  I’m walking a fine line here so bear with me.

It really hasn’t been cute around here lately.  This kid with a long, difficult history and understandable delays hitting the structure of public school has been downright ugly.  The shit has hit the fan, all hell has broken loose, the wheels have come off the wagon, choose your cliché.  There has been a lot of screaming, hitting, throwing of rocks, kicking of chairs, chasing of dogs and climbing of furniture.  Every person in our family has been deeply affected, every relationship strained.  It starts at five in the morning and ends when Mihiretu passes out at seven.

Because of this crisis (of faith and otherwise) we have acquired a behavioral pediatrician, a full-time aide at school, a speech therapist, the talents of the school – and district – psychologists, a male babysitter to run Mihiretu to exhaustion after school, a behavioral consultant for the home and a couples therapist.  It’s been super fun.  Lining all this up, admitting it was needed, finding the money to pay for it, and continuing to work out the kinks has taken almost all we’ve got.  Though I imagine the situation must be improving, I still feel under-fire.  Mihiretu isn’t the only one with PTSD.

There came a point where I sent out an email to a few trusted friends.  The subject line: “Calling all cars”.  The message:  Help, help me, any way you can.  For awhile there, when things were really grim, I had friends taking my girls for play-dates, giving them rides home from school, dropping off dinner.  The very act of admitting that kind of defeat, of showing my need, was out of the boundaries of my character, was certainly out of my comfort level. 

Perhaps Mihiretu has pushed us, quite firmly this last time, towards asking for and receiving the help we need.  That’s growth I suppose.  We have far more support now, from professionals and loved ones, than we did six months ago.  Frankly, our lives have been extremely challenging since Mihiretu came home from Ethiopia, three and a half years ago.  That’s a long time to be overwhelmed.

It occurred to me the other day that I should have a t-shirt made for when I'm out in public with Mihiretu.  It would read "You fucking try it".  Might give the old ladies in line at the grocery store pause before offering advice.  Might quell the glares at the mall from the perfect blonde moms with their perfect blonde children.  Might be a good reminder to me; this is a hard road we've chosen.  I'm doing my best.  Don't believe me?  You fucking try it.

Wedding Crashers

Ben and I went to a wedding on Saturday.  It’s been a long couple of months with the whole Mihiretu-kicking-Kingergarten’s-ass debacle so the twenty-four hours away from the kids, dressed in finery, was a welcome departure.

To celebrate his birthday, Ben took the day off on Friday and rode his bike.  For ten hours.  That’s his idea of a really good time.  He did indeed have a really good time but maybe 42 is the magic number because from Friday night on through the weekend he had tummy troubles and non-stop hiccups.  We arrived at the wedding looking good but in full diaphragm spasm.

We’re at a stage where we don’t know a lot of people getting married.  The year I turned thirty, forget about it, lots of weddings, but now it’s pretty much dried up.  We’re in a slump until the second marriages and weddings of offspring start happening.  That said, this particular wedding was a first for both bride and groom.  I don’t know them well but what I know I like an awful lot.  Clearly in love.  No question they have a happy future in front of them.  Those are the kind of weddings you want to go to.

The groom is a cyclist (I can’t get away from them) and so, in the ceremony, along with the customary oaths of mutual respect, death ‘til us part, etc, (all completely within this couple’s capabilities) she vowed “I promise to never get in between you and your bike.”  I muttered to myself, “Whoa, that’s a big promise.  Good luck with that one.”

The event was outside, the couple somehow landing on an eighty degree day at the end of October.  After the ceremony, as the crowd nibbled on crackers and brie, I found myself in the lucky position of chatting with the bride.  Like I said, I don’t know her well, so this was exciting.  In my giddiness, however, in my post-wedding, you’re-meant-for-each-other gush, I managed to gesticulate widely enough to karate-chop her wine glass from her newly bejeweled hand, sending it, and the red wine it held, smashing to the ground at her feet.  The crowd gasped, then seeing it was the bride with red wine splashed up her gown, mysteriously applauded.  Perhaps they thought it was on purpose?  Some sort of vaguely Jewish breaking of glass?  I learned later than everyone thought it was her that dropped the wine.  Criminally unjust.

I apologized, of course, profusely.  The bride was gracious, this woman is so poised it’d take more than red wine on her wedding dress to throw her off her game.  I told her that we were either going to be best friends from here forward or she was never going to talk to me again.  I fear the latter.

Later, much later, my hiccupping groom and I made our way back to our hotel.  At home we have a Tempurpedic mattress and so the hiccups of the previous night hadn’t really affected my sleep.  Here, however, we were on a standard mattress, on what turned out to be the equivalent of a bowl of Jello.  He’d hiccup, the bed would shake.  All night.

It’s kind of marriage in a nutshell, right?  You pledge to never get in between him and his bike.  You get red wine dumped on your white dress by a giggling acquaintance.  You go to bed on a jerking marital mattress.  If you’re lucky, that is, if you’re very, very lucky.

Sunny

For the last year we’ve been thinking about getting a dog.  If you know me at all, you might think that was a very bad idea.  I’m fastidious; I don’t like to get my hands dirty if I don’t have to, there is nary a crumb on my floor, the bed is always made, the house generally looks ready for a Pottery Barn shoot at any given moment.  Plus, my life is chaotic.  I have three strong-willed children, the youngest possibly the loudest person ever created.

We have thought, though, that a dog would be good for the kids.  Mae is all about animals – I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a vet as an adult – and until very recently the only pets she had at her disposal were three chickens and an elusive black cat who spends the majority of his time outside on the prowl.  Lana, to be frank, doesn’t give a shit about animals beyond naming them but, here too, is an opportunity to broaden her experience, maybe teach her how rewarding a relationship with a pet can be.  And then there’s Mihiretu.  If ever there was a child that could benefit from the non-verbal, unconditional affection of a dog, it’s him.

Because of Mihiretu’s unique history and accompanying set of issues, we considered a service dog.  First we signed up with Guide Dogs for the Blind for a flunkee (they call them “career change” dogs) but these dogs, because of their breeding and temperament, are highly desirable.  We’ve been on that list for a year.  We also applied for a therapy dog from Canine Companions, a service dog non-profit.  We were on the third round of the application process before they decided that Mihiretu was not quite bad off enough to be a recipient.  So we got on their flunkee list, also a long one.

We debated getting a puppy but that just seemed crazy.  I really don’t need more misbehavior in my house.  My friend, Ann, almost conducted a puppy intervention when I broached the subject.

And so we’ve been waiting for the right situation, hoping for a mature, sweet, well-trained dog who will not be freaked out by the loudest boy in the world.  A couple of weeks ago I got a call from my friend, Lisa.  She was in Bolinas at a yard sale and the family running the sale happened to be retired dog breeders and they happened to have two beautiful dogs that needed homes.  Long story short, Lisa adopted one dog, we met the other and said we’d pick her up in a few days.

In those few days, I got cold feet.  The breeders said the dog was a “dominant female”.  What that meant, specific to this dog, I couldn’t really get to the bottom of.  The thought of procuring a four-year-old dog with behavior problems that I couldn’t change was daunting.  I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  We passed on the dog.

A week ago Saturday, I was, for the first time in a long time, doing errands without children.  I stopped at Anthropologie (my happy place) to return something.  Camped outside was the Milo Foundation, a non-profit that rescues animals from high-kill shelters and fosters them until they find homes.  There were ten dogs or so barking it up and one of them was magic.  I saw her and thought, uh oh.

Sunny is three months old.  She’s some sort of labradoodle with maybe a little something else mixed in.  So far, she is calm, she is sweet, she is trainable, she is tolerant. She has hair instead of fur, for god’s sake.   I love her with an intensity I could not have predicted.  She follows me around the house, gazing at me adoringly.  She whines when she can’t see me.  She sleeps next to my bed.  I had forgotten how uncomplicated the love of a dog is.  Humans, very complicated.  Mihiretu, extremely complicated. This pup, just sunlight.

I wanted a therapy dog.  I just didn’t realize I was the one who needed the therapy.