Lavender
How giving my mother a pedicure helped me find a deeper level of compassion
I sit crosslegged at my mom’s new recliner and place one of her feet into a small trash bucket half-filled with warm, soapy water. The makeshift soak tub isn't large enough to accommodate the length of her arthritic foot, so her knobby big toe is forced to bend more than it wants to as it presses against the plastic barrier. “You OK, mom?” I ask. “I’m more than OK,” she says.
Earlier that same week, in the bustle of hauling her between two medical appointments at different hospitals across town from each other, then trying to make it back in time for a session with her occupational therapist, I forgot about her monthly, on-site podiatrist consultation. A few days earlier I had noticed her toenails were starting to look like claws. When I asked about her next foot health rendezvous, I noted the coming date on the calendar. And even though it had been front and center on my radar, I still overlooked it when it came around.
Rescheduling the session would have been more trouble than it was worth, and waiting another month simply wasn’t an option. I felt guilty my mom’s foot health would suffer from my blunder, so I decided to just knock it out myself. After all, I know feet. My past as a reflexologist and my career in the run industry has made me way less bothered by this body part so often deemed ugly or gross. Frankly, I find feet fascinating. Their construction is a marvel—all the myriad bones and joints and muscles, all their moving parts. Feet keep us moving, and when we stop moving we die. I really geek out on this sort of stuff.
When I practiced reflexology, I dug deep into the holistic connection between the zones of the foot and their correlating channels of life energy (chi). In addition to the standard session folks would book me for, I’d also offer clients a thorough reading of their energy. I’d connect the dots between where their chi was physically blocked and how it might be compromising the associated body part or emotion.
I got really good at this—so good, in fact, that a couple clients freaked out when I mentioned certain behavioral tendencies they apparently thought were concealed. “How do you know these things?” they’d ask. I’d often respond with, “Your feet told me,” which was true, But it wasn’t always a sufficient enough answer to put them at ease. The things I suddenly knew about them made my craft esoteric. My hidden knowledge was generally reserved for witches or psychics, and not for folks like me who rubbed feet for a living.
I haven’t serviced a reflexology client in many years, so I’m out of practice. I don’t easily recall the associative layers and connections that made me so good way back when. But my mom’s feet immediately trigger a few latent memories. For example, the callouses on the sides of her big toes are markers of her sugar craving. Also, her bilateral bunions tell me a little about her neck and throat areas. Though there may be a direct application to this specific body part, it’s more likely that these clues are indicative of the energetic connection. Specifically, her vocal apprehension. And if I’ve learned anything about my mom since I’ve started spending all this time with her, it’s that she is not very good at expressing her needs. Feet tell our story.
Years ago I did a proper session on my late father’s feet. His size 16-4Es were the largest I’d ever worked on—and, turns out, the most sensitive, too. I could barely touch him without him pulling his feet away and wincing or barking at me to “ease up.” His blocked areas—which is to say, the subcutaneous grainy areas, the crunchy bits beneath the top layer of skin—were centralized in the center of his foot. Reflexology associates these zones with the bladder, GI tract, and prostate. Which are all the parts that, for him, led to his demise.
Before this foot health session with my mom, I hit up a pharmacy and bought a stash of foot care items: a set of heavy duty clippers, a stainless steel cuticle pusher, a pumice stone to soften her callouses, a wireless nail drill to more efficiently thin out her nail beds, a cooling bottle of witch hazel, some tea tree oil to attack her smattering of nail fungus, a vial of lavender oil because why not, and a box of rubber gloves since I don’t know how contagious that fungus is. I also bought a face mask since it seemed prudent to approach this chore with added protection from any stray bits of shrapnel.
As I waited in line to make the purchase, the Walgreens cash register stalled for a few extra minutes. Long enough for the old woman behind me to nosily ask what I was buying. I jokingly said I was giving my mom a pedicure, which I suppose was more truth than a joke. “You’re a good son,” the woman said. I nodded, even though I didn’t really feel like one.
At my request, my mom lifts her foot from the tub and I take her wet foot in my hands. Her soaked skin is red and steaming, her thick nails suddenly more malleable. I dry the water off her foot and douse it with a splash of witch hazel. I then proceed to carefully clip angled wedges from each of her toenails. My mom leans back, and for a moment I think she might fall asleep. But then she rouses, picks up her phone, and begins responding to weeks of unanswered text messages. She seems relaxed. And strangely, so am I.
For most of the past year I’ve existed in an alternate reality. I’ve been tethered by a new set of concerns, all of which are regarding my mom’s health and well being.
This has all birthed to a new iteration of me. I’m mostly stuck in get-shit-done-for-mom mode and feel accountable, almost exclusively, to ensuring her continued progress. I easily lose sight of my big picture. I lose sight of who I am, what I want, and how I best fit into this short and unpredictable life. I lose sight because I am so caught up in my mom’s string of moments. So enveloped in the doing. The caring. And make no mistake, care is not always loaded with love. Care involves a spectrum of emotions that ranges between deep compassion and mountainous resentment.
The simplest way to describe my predicament—I am full. Full of worries and frets and concerns and questions relating to my newly widowed mom who recently sustained a severe fall and broken femur that will forever hereafter impair her ability to ambulate, and who is also starting to have trouble with her memory. In dedicating myself to her well being, I’ve lost my own balance. Lost sight of who I am. I blindly succumb to her known and unknown needs, and, though it pains me to fess up to this, I have hated her for it. This is not hyperbole.
I lean over and press the teeth of the clippers deep into my mother’s thick and brittle yellowing nails. I set down the simple tool, then pass the grinder over her nail plate to more fully expose the lunula—the rising moon at each toenail’s base. When I rub in a few drops of tea tree oil, its medicinal aroma pulls her from emojis and she tells me how much she appreciates my help.
There have been times that I’ve eschewed her thankful words. Times when I whatevered her sincere and grateful comments and allowed them to instead feed my indignation. But this time I nod and accept her gratitude. It’s taken time, a lot of time in fact, for me to allow space for this sort of recognition. And my response to my mom in this moment surprises me. There’s just the hum of the tool in my hands and a lightness in my heart. This act, along with everything else I’ve offered, suddenly feels less onerous.
What used to feel like bitterness, like fury, is evolving into a something favorable. A new, wide open space has presented itself. And in this space there lives a new sort of acceptance. A permission. A living cooperation.
I believe this space exists because of my months of discord. It could only come about because of my mental wrangling and internal disputes where I struggled terribly to find a foothold. This ultimate peace birthed from a semblance of hell. My own energies needed clearing in order for goodness to appear.
There are things we do in life that alter us forever—this era with my mom happens to be one of those for me. There’s no going back to what I once was, and frankly I think this is just fine. In fact, I might even admit to preferring what I’ve amounted to. But don’t yet hold me to those words.
I won’t pretend to like the new concerns or tasks that occupy my mind and time, but I will say that they’ve brought about a version of me that is far more in tune to compassion. This feels right. This feels like a version of me that’s better suited for the mysteries of my tomorrows.
As I finish my mom’s foot session, I give her one final douse of witch hazel, let it air dry, then rub in a couple drops of lavender oil—her favorite scent. As soon as it hits her skin, the air turns floral. She looks up again from her phone. “Oooh—that smell reminds me of talking walks with dad,” she says. “There was this one house with a lavender bush we’d stop at and crush its little seeds between our fingers…it smelled so good.”
Her detail blooms into more memories about walks with my father and the houses and people and barking dogs and yards filled with toys they would pass along the way. She remembers it all so vividly. Her spoken words sound clearer than they have in months. More confident than she sounds when discussing her new solo routine of pills and PT sessions and adding reminders to her calendar.
She’s suddenly wide-eyed and lucid—as if transported back to her and my dad’s house on Cragg Road. She slips into a time when her legs worked better, when she knew how to silence an interrupting cell phone call, where her husband still wrapped his warms arms around her and tells her everything is going to be alright. She occupies two places, two timeframes, at once—her yesterday and her now.
Which makes me suddenly know a few things: I want to create, in any way I can, this kind of solace for my mom. I want to give her whatever I can to help her remember things. I want to place breadcrumbs that lead her to uplifting memories. Because these memories are leaving. These memories will soon be inaccessible. These memories will soon be nobody’s memories.
She leans back in the recliner and closes her eyes as she breathes in the aromatic air. A smile widens on her face as she steps easily on broken sidewalks with my dad one more time. Stopping occasionally to take it all in.
Beyond words! ❤️