Aye, There’s the Rub
Shakespeare has Hamlet say, “To sleep, perchance to dream, aye, there’s the rub…”. It is part of the great “to be or not to be” soliloquy and I have a new take on the whole affair. Hamlet was very troubled, to say the least, and was contemplating death by suicide. I love life and am way too much of a chicken to ever come within a mile of that contemplation, but I do spend a good deal of time contemplating sleeping and, I suppose, by extension, dreaming. My latest nap came this afternoon for about 20-30 minutes while I was getting my first proper massage in six weeks. Sleeping is great. Dreaming is pretty cool, but kinda hard to understand and explain. But getting a massage, at least one from my massage therapist, Andrew, rocks my world. Aye, there’s the rub I’m talking about.
I don’t know exactly when I started getting messages regularly, but I think I can date it back to the restart of my adult skiing escapade, which began for real about thirty-five years ago when I first went to Utah with my buddies in the Latin American Merchant Banking Department. I was running the Department and one of my lieutenants was a great guy named Ray Anderson, who was a devout and very pleasant Mormon who hailed from Utah. Ray went on to fame, if not fortune, as the Treasurer of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka Mormon Church), but before he did that he got all of us who were skiers out to Utah for a week of skiing. We rented a great western lodge at Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort and skied all the area slopes from Alta to Deer Valley, anything that was an hour away, which was about eight areas in the Wasatch Range. Ray also introduced us to the traditions of the Mormon religion by having several co-eds from Brigham Young University (BYU) come up to our lodge to cook for us and serve us…all gratis for the sake of serving their brother Ray, for whom they held great reverence.
It was on that trip that I learned that rubbing the lactic acid out of your sore and aching quadriceps was the way to get ready for the next day’s skiing. From then on, over a fifteen year adventure of owning homes in Park City, whenever I went out I would get a massage almost every day. I found it really made the difference between hobbling through a ski vacation and really enjoying it and being ready to go every morning. One day in 1996, when I was getting massage from my favorite ski massage therapist, Deb Wells, I told her I had organized a motorcycle trip through southern Utah. Deb knows everything about Utah and made the suggestion that I hire her to go along for the trip and both act as tour guide and give massages to any of the five of us who wanted them. What a great idea, I thought, and agreed on the spot. When the five of us set out from Park City that May, Deb was driving the chase van, wrangling our gear for us and giving us great massages after a long day’s riding. While the ski massages lasted for the full fifteen years of my ownership of a home in Park City and my ski career on the slopes of Deer Valley, the motorcycle massage, admittedly less about the quads and much more about the neck and shoulders, has lasted for 27 years and is still running. Deb does less and less massage these days, but her able-bodied sidekick, Mardie has been rubbing us all the right way for probably over twenty years by now.
Somewhere, over that time, I started taking massages at home and at my various vacation houses (like my Hamptons house in Quiogue) was well as when on vacation or cruises. My general advice is to skip the vacation and cruise massages because it is at best hit or miss. Kim and I actually find fairly universally that those massages are simply not good enough to be worth the top-dollar they command. The only way to get a massage that you find helpful in easing your aches and pains is to get a therapist that works for you and stick with them. I have had a series of massage therapists over the years and have gone to a weekly two-hour deep tissue massage as a big part of my personal physical maintenance program. When we lived in Southern Manhattan, I found a Chinese therapist, Mr. Km, strangely enough, who made my weeks worth living by keeping me limber when i was having an inordinate amount of hip discomfort that would risk keeping me up at night. He did a lot of leg and hip work on me for two hours every Sunday morning at a massage room in a local day spa. I would buy 20 massages at at time from Mrs. Lee and presumably Mr. Kim got his agreed share plus the tip I would give him each week.
When we started coming out here a few years ago (before living here full time), my brother-in-law Jeff, who appreciates a good massage like I do, referred me to a guy named Andrew. After one massage, I knew Andrew would be my guy out here. Kim liked him as much as I did. Kim gets a massage about once for every four times I do. I could argue that its because of all my heavy hillside gardening, and that would not be unreasonable, but the only word that really tells the tale is “heavy”. I am a heavy guy and I beat up my body doing almost anything. This is getting more and more noticeable as I get older. It takes me a few steps after sitting for an extended period just to feel that I can stand the discomfort of walking. Once I get going, I’m usually just fine.
When I first moved here, I would get a massage every two weeks or so, but as my yard work increased, so did my aches and pains and I went to a regular weekly session. When Kim joins, I go to a 90 minute massage, but otherwise, I get a full 120 minutes and usually fall asleep for about 30 of that. The focus on my hamstrings and inner thighs is extreme and lately, the upper back and shoulder are in need of and getting more and more attention. Andrew is amazing. he has really learned the physiology of massage. He knows all the muscles, all the tendons, all the ligaments and connection points. He knows exactly where all the trigger points are located and he is happy to describe what he feels as he is massaging. This area is tense and tight, meaning it needs lots of work. That area is releasing easily, which means that its not so injured or perhaps injured so much that it submits itself willingly to being worked. I find the discussion when I am on the table almost as good as valuable as the massage itself. It confirms what hurts and why and that has good value to me. Sometimes its just confirmatory, but every once in a while, Andrew surprises me and tells me something I didn’t feel.
Today, he spent time on my left shoulder at my request and twice I could feel and he certainly could feel that his manipulations caused my shoulder to reset itself in the socket. Wow! That was an amazing experience. I had not known that I had had a minor dislocation that needed to be reset. He warned me not to assume it would solve the discomfort completely, but I can already tell it feels better. So, Andrew is scheduled again for next week and I know that it is very important for me to keep this regimen going. Long ago I heard that Bob Hope got a massage every day as he got older. He said it was the secret to his happy and long life. I am tending to agree with that assessment. It costs a few bucks but, aye, there’s the rub.