Spa Paradise

We have had it!

A week of spa paradise. Massages with hot stones and warm oils. Chocolates with almonds. Foot wraps and whirlpools. Special work on chakra's, energy work, my friend calls it. Floating in a pool like a primal being. Steak. Salmon. Pasta. Fine wines. Working out on the fitness equipment in the gym (a little Utah Jazz eye candy didn't seem to hurt). Water. Sleep. Our cosmetics arranged geometrically on the marble counter,complete with hair tie perfectly surrounding the toothpaste tube. Room service. Beaudouin the doorman who made us feel completely at home. And the goldfish.

Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, carrot cake and more carrot cake. And wonderful music in the room. And great books to read. And some basketball to check on.

One could not live in such delicious pampering forever (though if they ever need volunteers...) but what a privelege to spend a week with Kaia making sure that she was detoxed and destressed and detached from the cares of life. No broken bones to see, no intubations, no heart-wrenching family dramas in the ER where she works.

"It's all about you" said the flyer she received and I think it was.

This is not decadence. It is not over-indulgence. It is attention. Loving, attentive care. Relief. Release. An honoring of our physical beings who work so hard for us. A giving back.

I learned a few hours after the  Japanese earthquake that my Japanese friend was having a massage when the "big one" hit.  She got on the floor under the table. She is now thinking of priveliege in terms of having enough toilet paper. And Spam. I'm going to catapult the Spam over and she stocked up at Costco.

Life is so weird. One minute we are luxuriating in a heavenly massage. Next moment, we are collecting iodine tablets. That's the way it works, the way it goes.

What I have learned is that I will lie on the massage table when I am able and leave the burrowing under it for the moment when that too is called for. I will ask for what I need and not hold back.

I will swing for the lines. Aim at the edges. The lines are there to be hit. That's where life is.

I don't want to not hear about what is 'out there' because of course it is beyond my reach.  Are you kidding?  I want to hear about it all, know about it all.  Imagine, vision, ask, try. Aim for the lines.

Thank you, Kaia, for being my spa buddy, for inspiring this in the first place, for being so wonderful that I would want to spend a whole week pampering and treating you to what feels and is and  definitely right.

Geez, am I lucky or what? 

Lucky.