The clients come and go, like lovers. Some seem to like me very much, but then they go away and don’t come back. Others, I can tell, don’t like me at all, and yet they stay and stay and stay. And some I detest, I abhor, I don’t want to spend another minute in their presence, but I am paid to be kind and attentive. I drench them with my sweetness, speak to them in honey-tones so thick my tongue can barely move, count the moments until they leave, and then they do leave, but not until they have pre-booked their next appointment. Clients- like lovers- are a breed I do not yet understand.

But every once in awhile, everything goes just as it should. Yesterday a woman made an appointment to have her hair shampooed and styled. I am used to these women. They require tenderness, someone to be gentle with them and make them feel like they are still a whole person, even though it’s difficult for them to walk up the stairs to the salon. Even though they can’t wash their hair on their own anymore. I have learned to silently place my arm just underneath their elbow as they ease themselves into my chair, making it seem like a natural part of the appointment rather than a spotlight on their unsteady feet. I’ve learned to offer tea or water to ease the dryness in their mouths, and I’ve learned to ask questions that matter to them: their garden, their family, their troublesome hip. I like seeing these women because it feels like the completion of a circle; these are mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers who need- in a gradual reversal of roles- to have someone wash and love and coo over them. I don’t mind being that person.

The woman who came in yesterday was incredibly frail. She couldn’t climb the stairs at all so I walked with her around the side of the building to the second-floor entrance, and as we made our slow, shuffling way along the sidewalk, she asked if I wouldn’t mind holding her hand. Her nails were long and perfectly rounded. Inside, she dropped heavily into my chair and I gave her a glass of cool water so she could breathe again. I fastened the drape around her neck and we chatted quietly until she had recovered enough to walk over to the shampoo bowl. She told me her skin wasn’t as young as it used to be, and as my hands worked the lather over her red and bumpy scalp I said a silent prayer of thanks that God made me into the kind of person who isn’t bothered by that sort of thing. Young skin isn’t the only kind of skin that needs to be touched. While I was rinsing her hair an ambulance screamed by on a nearby road and she winced. “I hate hearing that sound,” she said.

When she felt beautiful again I removed her drape and walked with her back around the building, then helped her get settled in the front seat of her car. She thanked me, and I knew I was loved. Everything felt complete, then. It’s like a child with a music box; the child wants desperately to hear the music play, and the music box yearns to sing. The child turns the key, the music begins, and a perfect moment has been created.

Their website says, “As a modern interpretation of old ideas, we are re-defining public bathing.” I had never been to a place like this before, and I was nervous. I made the decision to go on a whim, called in an appointment, and decided to go alone. I find it easier to experience new things on my own, when the pressure to make conversation or seek comfort in the familiarity of a companion is taken away and I can immerse myself fully in the moment. It’s usually terrifying, but I have mastered the body language and facial expressions of someone who looks like they know what they’re doing, and I practiced these in my bathroom mirror before I left. Shoulders back. Features relaxed. No fidgeting.

The girl at the front desk was sweet and friendly; she smiled at me and told me her name was Carly, too. I gave her my wallet and my keys, signed the consent forms, and went as directed into the changing room where I put on my bathing suit and took a brief shower. Carly had given me an enormous white robe and a pair of brown rubber sandals, so I put these on and stood for a moment at the door leading into the main spa area. I studied the map that was posted on the inside of the door and tried to picture what I would find on the other side. You are here. I wasn’t ready to go in, but I was no longer alone in the changing room. Shoulders back, features relaxed, no fidgeting. I pushed open the door and walked into the spa.

I was in an enormous open room with wet stone floors and high windows that flooded the space with natural light. Another smiling employee met me in the middle of the room and showed me where to hang my robe, then explained the rotation. Fifteen minutes in the steam room. Fifteen minutes in the sauna. A quick dip in the cold plunge pool followed by some time in the saltwater bath. Rinse off and begin again. After a few rotations your therapist will come find you. Shouldersbackfeaturesrelaxednofidgeting. I thanked her, and began my rotation.

The steam room was small and silent; white marble floors, white marble benches, white marble walls. Thick, eucalyptus-scented steam billowed from the corner. I sat down on one of the dripping benches and tried to breathe. It was difficult and my heart was pounding, but the room was warm and the music was beautiful so I leaned back and tried to ignore the sucking sound my bare legs and palms made against the wet marble. Breathing was so labor-intensive that I quickly realized I would have to work my way up to the full fifteen minutes, so I found my towel and went into the sauna. Unlike the steam room, everything here was dark. Dark red brick walls, dark wooden benches, one dim light burning from a back corner. I felt like I was inside an oven. I had to sit on my towel because the benches were too hot for my bare skin. The heat would have dried my body in moments, but I was sweating so profusely that I had to keep wiping the moisture out of my eyes. I spent my time in the sauna trying to work up the courage for what came next: the cold plunge pool. It was an important part of the rotation, a way to cool me down instantly and get my heart pumping, but I knew it would be incredibly intense. I stayed in the sauna until my body was so hot I could hardly move, and then put my towel with the rest of my things and walked over to the pool. Without giving myself any time for second thoughts, I jumped in. The icy water took my breath away. My heart was pounding so ferociously that I could feel it beating inside my brain. I think I squealed. I made my way across the small pool and climbed out, my fingers struggling to grip the handles on either side of the ladder. And then I lost myself in the blessedly warm embrace of the saltwater bath. After a few moments I realized why they told me to do the full rotation… I had never in my life felt so alive in my own skin.

After a second rotation, a small woman with honey-colored skin and a head full of black curls appeared and called out my name. Gathering my things, I followed her to the far corner of the room and we slipped behind a high, white curtain. She instructed me to remove my robe and bathing suit, and lie face down on the bed. It looked like a regular massage bed, sleek and rectangular with a towel-covered face cradle. But instead of flannel and soft blankets, this bed was covered with a black rubber sheet. There were drains in the floor, and to my left a waist-high barrel full of water. She went to the other side of the curtain and I did as I was told, fighting back waves of fear and near-debilitating modesty as I climbed naked onto the waterproof bed. There was nothing separating the spectacle of my nude body from the main spa room other than the thin hanging curtain. I could hear splashes and murmurs from the pools, and the sound of bare feet slapping against the wet floor as people made their way along the rotation. I felt more exposed than I ever have in my life, yet strangely relaxed and exhilarated. I realized I trusted this woman, my therapist. I felt safe. She would be able to see every inch of me in the daylight-filled room, every squish and sag and mole and ripple, and for some inexplicable reason this felt okay. She joined me behind the curtain, and my salt scrub began.

First, she rinsed me. Plunging a large silver jug into the barrel of water, she poured wave after wave of warm water all down my body. Then donning a pair of latex gloves, she began mixing the scrub. “A combination of honey, cocoa butter, and coarse salt,” she said. Scooping some out of the bowl with her fingers, she began rubbing circles on my shoulders. “Let me know if I use too much pressure.” Down my back, my arms, my fingers, my hips, my legs, my feet. Circles, circles, circles, of sticky, grainy salt. I no longer cared that I was naked. I no longer cared that there were strangers on the other side of the curtain. All I could focus on was the sacredness of the moment as this quiet woman scrubbed my body and then rinsed me again, warm water sloshing over my skin and down onto the floor. I turned over on the bed and she rubbed the front of me, my chest and stomach, my knees and toes. Rinse again. My skin was humming. She covered my eyes with a damp cloth and spritzed my face with rosewater, and then used exfoliating gloves to clean my skin with something that smelled like lavender and turned into a thick foam with each movement of her hands. She helped me sit up and she rinsed me again, jug after jug of warm water poured down my shoulders and gathering in puddles between my legs. I stood up and she led me through a slit in the curtain to another room with another waterproof bed, this one covered in filmy sheets of thin muslin. Still naked, I lay down on the bed and let her paint me with mud. She brushed it over my skin, thick and warm, and then wrapped the muslin around me, pressing and stretching the fabric tight around my body. A bee, drawn through an unseen open window by the scent of wetness and honey, flew lazily around my face before landing on my bathing suit, which was hanging from a wall-mounted hook. This, I thought, must be a good omen.

After all the mud had been rinsed from my body I was led upstairs and given a mug of tea, then taken by a young man down a carpeted hallway to the massage room. I climbed between the soft, dry sheets and slept while he rubbed oils into my skin. This was the last service of the day, and afterwards I dressed, retrieved my things from the front desk, and drove to the beach. I wasn’t ready to go home.

I lay in the shade of a giant madrona tree on a bluff overlooking the water, drifting in and out of consciousness. My drowsy mind struggled to comprehend what had just happened to me. My body, I realized, had been consecrated. Not since I was an infant had I ever allowed anyone to touch me the way I had just been touched, to cleanse me and purify me with the tenderness of a mother washing her newborn child. Not since I was too little to walk on my own, before I learned how to run away and hide my face, had I ever surrendered myself so completely to the hands of another person.

I had forgotten what it felt like to be cared for.

Today was Zibbit’s first day of Kindergarten. And because nothing in my life can occur smoothly or without incident, a large bug flew down the front of my dress while I waited with her outside the classroom. While all the other parents hovered around the children, snapping photos and adjusting backpack straps, I stood near the back of the group surreptitiously digging between my breasts and flapping the hem of my purple dress. Eventually I had to duck behind a patch of sunflowers so I could reach in and remove it from my bra, but other than that the morning went really well.

This week also marks my first encounter of the school year with one of the Intense Moms from the elementary school. You know who she is. She is the one who organizes a class play date at the park, complete with juice boxes and chocolate chip cookies, days before school has even started. She’s the one who will bring fresh fruit for the children to enjoy on the first day of school, and then spend every Monday afternoon cutting shapes out of contruction paper to “help the teacher out a bit.” She’ll volunteer in the school library and chaperone every field trip, and when you miss the Fall Carnival because you are working that night she will graciously offer to give you the password for her on-line photo album so you can see the photos she has electronically scrapbooked. I am simultaneously in love with and terrified of the Intense Mom, mostly because she makes me feel like a useless idiot (and don’t we always fall for the ones who make us feel stupid? Haha. Bitterness isn’t funny.). I know that these women are an important part of the elementary school experience (without them, pretty much nothing would ever get done) but I wish it wasn’t so blatantly obvious that I’m not one of them. These mothers dress their daughters in darling, hand-made corduroy dresses with white ruffled socks and unscuffed Mary Janes, while I consider our day a success if the girls have made it to school in anything other than a pajama top and flip-flops. If their hair is brushed I get double points, and if we make it all the way to school without realizing we have left something important at home I pretty much feel like I should be awarded the medal of honor. I am filled with anxiety when dealing with Intense Mom, and I live in constant fear that she will discover that I often make frozen pizza for dinner. But I also really want to be her friend, if for no other reason than she may toss some home-baked zucchini bread my way every now and then. The school year is a difficult time for me, socially-speaking.

In other news, the ants are still dying one by one on my living room floor. I don’t even move them anymore. One dies, and a crowd of three or four will gather around it, pacing back and forth and talking to each other through brief antennae taps, and then the next day they are all gone. I don’t know where they take the dead ones. I feel like I am living on a burial mound. I spoke to the pest people on the phone today, and they told me to leave some food on the floor so I can follow the ants when they carry it away. We can kill them faster if we know exactly where the nest is. This makes me feel a little bit too much like my friend who went deer hunting in Alaska and ended up beating a doe to death with his oar as she swam past his boat.

I bet Intense Mom would have no problem killing these ants herself. And then she would probably pin their bodies to a piece of cardboard and have an impromptu Entomology lesson. I’ll ask her about it tomorrow.

There were ants, ants everywhere. I was so upset. Not because there were ants in my house. Not because of the damage they had surely done behind the wall plaster. But because I knew an exterminator would have to come. I would be responsible for the death of hundreds- perhaps thousands- of innocent lives. I ran over a rabbit once, and as I drove on through the night, tears streaming down my cheeks, I remember thinking to myself, Let this be a learning experience. I know now that I am the kind of girl who cries over dead rabbits. I thought of that rabbit as I contacted my rental agency, asking them to set up the appointment with the Bug Man. If I wept over one rabbit, how in the world would I be able to survive a thousand dead ants? I considered taking the day off work. I would need time to grieve.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. He came while we were out, leaving behind a friendly note and no trace of his massive extermination. I had been told that I may still see them for a few days but their numbers would dwindle and they would eventually disappear completely as soon as the queen had died. I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I had no choice. After a few days they were gone. I consoled myself with the knowledge that my house was safe now, and I tried not to think about the rabbit.

But- and I can barely bring myself to type this- they seem to be coming back. It’s not the same as before, there are no jolly fat scouts running hither and yon across the wood floors, no spry little sentinels marching the perimeter of the living room, protecting their precious Queen Mother. These ants… there is something wrong with these ants. They are confused. Yesterday I found one in the toilet, one in the cat’s water dish, and one running in circles in the hallway. The day before there was one rather large fellow who spent an hour in front of my fireplace, wiggling but rooted to the spot, like a mime caught in his invisible box. At one point I crouched down on my knees to examine him closely. He looked fine (six legs, two antennae, large, wood-chewing jaws all intact) but he was acting so strange. He kept wiping at his face with his two front legs, first one leg then the other, back and forth, wipe, wipe, wipe. I grabbed a sprig of lavender from a nearby vase and poked at him gently, which seemed to make him angry but he still kept on with the wiping. And then I thought, oh god, is he blind? Am I responsible for blinding an entire colony of ants? Is that how this is done? Are they left to wander aimlessly, following chemical trails as far as they can but losing their way after all, doomed to stumble through a world of darkness until some hungry robin comes along at breakfast-time? How is this okay? How does the Bug Man sleep at night, knowing what he has done? I scooped up this blind little ant and placed him gently on the front porch, fraught with grief over the terrible state of everything. I killed a rabbit, blinded a thousand ants, and also I keep forgetting to feed the hummingbirds who are probably all dead now, as well. I hoped that this one ant, at least, would make it. That he would find a kind-hearted beetle who could lead him gently through life, that they would fall in love even though all odds were against them, and live forever in some cozy little burrow under the rose bush in my front yard. But the next day he was still on the porch, curled up and crispy-looking, not moving at all. I am a horrible, awful person.

And what to do, what to do? They are still wandering, little lost souls, here and there among the coloring books and pink sparkly flip-flops. They are not well, and this is desperately sad. Who do I call now? Do I bring the Bug Man back with his death machine, to finish them off completely? Can I call a priest to bless them and send them to the great beyond washed clean of all their sins? Would a priest even do that sort of thing? I am reminded of a line from a poem that I love- it goes like this: I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone. I know I shouldn’t eat oatmeal alone, and I know I shouldn’t fret over the immortal souls of ants, but I do these things anyway. And I’m not even Catholic. But I bet Jesus would never call an exterminator.

We have had weeks of unrelenting heat; thick, humid days that hit record temperatures and left every living thing limp and wilted. On the hottest day, a brush fire burned just north of my neighborhood. It was too hot to close the windows against the smoke, and I kept thinking how appropriate it all was. It made so much sense for the steaming, heavy evening air to smell like fire. I bathed the girls in cool water that night and put them to bed with wet hair and damp cloths laid across their chests. Everyone I know had been complaining about the weather for days, but I loved it. Even on that hot, burning night I loved it. It felt like being inside of something.

It seems like that is the great journey of my life, this search for someplace warm and safe. Not even my memories will do. I seem to only remember the sad things. Everything has always been so terribly frightening. I remember reading A Wrinkle In Time when I was very young, and being much too scared to sleep. I also knew that I couldn’t get up and find my parents because they would be angry that I had gotten out of bed. I remember laying stiffly in my bed for hours, too frightened to stay there and too frightened to leave, my heart pounding in the darkness until I finally fell asleep. Sometimes life feels like that: an endless stretch of lonely, black night. I used to conjure up images of things that would comfort me, beings who loved me very much and would make me feel safe, like the fairy in The Velveteen Rabbit who finally made the sawdust bunny Real. I still do that sometimes. I imagine my grandmother (who died shortly after Babs was born) watching me from wherever she is now, sending me waves of softness and love. It amazes me sometimes how separate we all are from each other, each of us wanting so much to be loved and each of us trying so hard to do it all on our own.

The clouds are back now, and the air outside is cool and clean. We spent the day at home yesterday with a fire in the fireplace and applesauce muffins baking in the oven; lovely long hours of dozing on the couch with fat cats and little girls. Pamela was with us, and Zibbit crawled into her lap and buried her face in my friend’s neck. “Pamby,” Zibbit said, “you smell just like Mommy.” I wanted to cry just then. I wanted to hold my daughter’s face in my hands and explain to her how very, very lucky she is to have so many people that she loves, who love her so completely in return. But she’ll understand when she’s older.