I spent most of the summer of 2023 taking care of my father while he was hospitalized after a car crash and aneurysm. In the evenings I would send updates to his family and friends.
The full archive is here and the family shares it publicly in hope that it might be helpful to others who are dealing with an aneurysm (including caring for someone who had one). But for most readers only two entries are worth reading. Here is the second.
Hi again,
And now for something completely different...
A few days ago I was in bad shape. My back had become so sore from all its time bending over Lee in a hospital bed that I was having trouble sleeping. So I decided to finally fix that, and looked online for a massage therapist in Tustin.
Sadly, Google betrayed me. Despite some good reviews, I ended up at the most depressing massage therapist I had ever met. Nothing was really wrong, but also nothing was right.
The building had once been a doctor's office and was barely redecorated. The curved railings on the ceilings that once held sliding curtains were still there. The lighting was gloomy instead of soothing. The place felt haunted: not in the sense that someone had once dramatically died there, but in the sense that every day someone there died a little bit inside.
Perhaps the supposedly relaxing music had also never been altered since the change of business. It was the type of computer generated music that tries to sound like actual instruments but does not, has a bit too much brass, and drunkenly stumbles between holiday tunes, classical music, and pop tunes from the 70s and 80s. It would only have worked in the elevator at a funeral home.
The massage therapist was a little old Asian lady who barely spoke any English. She knew "If it hurts you tell me, okay?" and how to ask for a tip afterwards. But she did not understand when I asked her where she was from. When I told her that I did Swedish massage, and asked what kind of massage she did, her reply was, "I do your feet now, okay?"
There was no intake paperwork, questions about my health history, or anything else I would expect at a typical American spa or massage business. But my back was so sore that having toddlers drive Matchbox cars on it would have been therapeutic. So I expected a strange, multicultural, beneficial experience.
But even the first day's homework in my first massage class was nicer. Every one of my classmates back then, and every massage therapist who has done body work on me, clearly saw themselves as a caring person whose hands did healing. This poor old lady was simply going through motions like a machine, not reading my musculature at all, not adapting her technique.
You can learn a lot about someone when touching them for a while. It can happen even when people touch you. I got more depressed as the massage went on. We are taught to "love your neighbor as you love yourself," but it felt clear this woman did not love herself enough to love her clients.
I thanked her, gave her a nice tip, and departed wondering how to pray for her, and how she managed to stay in business.
Then my night really got depressing, for as I was getting my car going an SUV parked and four young guys got out, laughing with each other, and went into the massage parlor half an hour before its closing time. "Ah," I realized, "that's how she stays in business."
Fortunately, both stories I know about prostitutes involve pastors.
As I drove home I thought about a pastor named Richard who hated the name of his church. He wanted a name that proclaimed that the congregation was welcoming. "Well," I told him, "there is a Biblical Hebrew word that means 'wide open and welcoming' and was often used to describe fields and farmland. But you cannot use it." This of course puzzled him, so I explained that the word is rachav, or in English the name Rahab. This was not a name that Biblical heroine was born with: it was her descriptive work name. Surely some congregational elder or member would protest if Richard suggested renaming his church the Church of Rahab. To Richard's credit, he seriously thought about it for a while before agreeing that it wouldn't fly.
As I drove home I also thought about a pastor named Stewart who was once traveling alone in Europe, in one of those strangely European nice hotels located in a part of a city both touristy and run down. He left the hotel to go on a walk to find a restaurant for dinner. Quite near the hotel two young girls asked him if he wanted a good time. He kept going, and clearly heard God reprimand him: You can't just walk by! "God," he protested, "I'm a pastor and they are prostitutes. Aren't I supposed to just walk by?" But there was no reply. Steward had no resources that might actually help, being far from his congregation and lacking local friends. "It is just me and two girls," he thought. So the best he could think of was ordering a lot of pizza delivered to his hotel room, finding the local VHS store to rent a bunch of Disney movies, and paying the two girls to simply be two girls until morning while he read theological books and slept on the floor. Did he do the right thing? Was there a right thing? He still does not know.
As I drove home I also thought about the terrible road on which trapped people walk, in which they are only valued when useful. Many of that road's exits are dysfunctional as people use spotlights and thunder like Oz the Great and Powerful to distract society's attention: the boss who is narcissistic, the human resources officer who is obsessed with metrics, the traveler who replaces real relationships with lust or wanderlust. It's depressing and dehumanizing to remain stuck on that road, as that massage therapist so clearly was.
So I went to Rocket Fizz on Del Mar, where I could fill a bag with various candies. I knew about the store because Lee and Dena once took my two boys there, to spoil each of them with a self-selected bag of candy. (My younger son paced himself so his bag of candy lasted over a year. "I am good at savoring," he proclaimed.)
I could not really change anything for that poor woman. Yet perhaps delivering the unexpected bag of sweets was enough of a sweet gesture: a symbol that someone values her for more than being useful, and an encouragement to not give up looking for a healthy exit from that terrible road.
Yesterday I went elsewhere in Tustin and received a proper massage (thanks to Kevin, link). This not only means I am sleeping better, but also that this story is complete and ready to share. You can keep it in your pocket, for when you unexpectedly need to give a sermon or commencement speech!
As a math teacher I'm allowed to give homework. What healthy exits have you found from the terrible road of only being valued when useful?
(I already shared three answers that my father taught me, in yesterday's evening e-mail.)
Two long e-mails in two days! If you visited Lee recently and I seemed a bit tired or distracted, now you know why. Lee is right: sometimes clocks do follow the coastline paradox.