A Mommy and Me Massage

Here’s one I wanted to write about. Last Mother’s Day, my daughter and I had a Mommy and Me Spa Day at home. We found a massage therapy company with certified pediatric massage therapists. The LMTs travel to the clients’ homes. So, we didn’t have to leave extra early.

The therapists arrived fifteen minutes early. My daughter was excited. She’s 11 and this would be her second massage, the first being on vacation in Bermuda when she was only 9. Of course, my husband and I massage her every night before bed, so she’s very familiar with how much a good massage can help. My husband’s massages are just MEH but I am actually really good. My grandmother was a bone-setter and I worked as a helper to her when I was very young.

My daughter was very interested in having her back massaged. She does dance, just like her Mom, and she’s actually accrued a bunch of injuries in her short life. She even knows human anatomy pretty well, and informed the massage therapist where to focus. The therapist was taken aback at her knowledge of the muscle names! My daughter is funny, she doesn’t really seem like a scholar-type. But she gets straight A grades. School is just easy for her.

She also has a leg injury, suffered from episodes of sciatica, hurt her ankle, and has a stiff neck. I figure, by the time she graduates college, she’ll need a retirement home. She is very hard on her body and demanding. She doesn’t do competitive dance, but she has to get the steps right, all the same. She rarely smiles, and has a really expressionless face. She has grey eyes, and sometimes she reminds me of a ghost.

But after her massage, she was beaming. I swear I’ve never seen that kid smile so much. I even wondered if she still had teeth. (She does.) The massage was scheduled for sixty minutes, but at fifty, she asked me if we could do two hours instead. The therapists said they were free, and so I said why not. She was like, “I am just starting to relax!” After an hour, she looked much more like the kid she used to be. After a shower and a quick snack, she was in bed and asleep by 7 PM. She didn’t even eat dinner.

What should a proper massage for kids entail? These therapists were great. My massage was top notch, and my daughter couldn’t stop raving, even weeks later, about how all her pain was gone. She had been joking that she was 11 going on 111. Now, she said, she felt her age.

Do I push her too hard to be a perfectionist? I don’t think so, but maybe she picks it up from me by a process a lot like osmosis? I am that way, 100%.

But she didn’t stop there. She made me make her a Google mail account and she even left a review. She sometimes seems so mature for her age. Five minutes later, she was playing with her Barbie dolls. Girls will be girls.

This year she’s doing girl scouts and also dance. Hip-hop, lyrical, ballet, and jazz. So of course, I’m always happy when she miraculously brings home a perfect report card. But I’m a little wary. She has the same weird eyes her grandfather (Dad’s Dad) has. She looks like she could snap the neck of a rabbit and not blink. I hope she channels that energy for the positive and joins the military, or something, when the time comes. Her Grandfather is retired Navy, and I think that personality type they share is good for that sort of occupation.

Image from Steve Buissinne

My Blog’s Name

I never explained about the title. I was a dancer. I started at the age of eighteen months, and kept going right through college. I even have a double major in business management and dance. Dance to me is about staying ahead of the curve, moving faster than life so I can finally catch up.

I have a difficult time. Maybe it’s with three kids, a profession (I work in pharmaceuticals), and a demanding pace in terms of keeping up with housework, I am just overburdened, chronically.

So I dance. I dance with the lights down low, late at night. Sometimes my husband dances with me. We dance on the terrace under the pale moonlit bower.

Image from Manfred Pollnow

Maraschino Cherries And Coffee Ice Cream

I’m pregnant again. We were not planning on a fourth child, but hey, here we are. I’m coping surprisingly well. I was in pain for my first three pregnancies, and so this time around I’m getting prenatal massage at home, so I am feeling a lot better.

I’m also giving in to my cravings, because to do anything else is like self-torture. This time around it’s coffee ice cream. With a cherry on top. My sister is a crazy vegan and tries telling me all the time that dairy is bad for the baby. I’m like, “Oh. kay.” First of all, that’s utter nonsense. If she wants to be a vegan, more power to her. But telling me I’m injuring my baby. That’s just not true.

Now the other aspect of this is the caffeine. My doctor said that coffee ice cream doesn’t have much caffeine, and so I’m in the clear. I’ve already gained almost forty pounds so far during this pregnancy, and so I am only concerned about gestational diabetes. I’m already at 27 weeks. I just want a natural birth and I’ll be happy.

I think the massages are helping. During my last three pregnancies, I had pain in my feet almost nonstop. I also had severe lower back pain and there was no way to make it stop. Of course, I hadn’t yet discovered massage for pregnant women. It’s been a real lifesaver, but I know there’s more I have to do.

For one, I need to get back to my stretching. Yoga has helped me so much in this life, but I always feel like crap, and doing yoga takes vital energy. It’s no excuse because in the end I feel better. Who can argue with that?

My husband is pestering me because he doesn’t want me getting too fat. I feel like telling him to carry the baby then! He gets to go off to work every day while I go to work, too, but then have to come home and take care of the other kids, and do all this while feeling like an inflatable whale. It’s not fair, but then again, he is supportive. I get it. He wants a trophy wife and if I get too heavy, he will no longer be able to brag. That’s fine with me. I like being treated like I am a supermodel.

I actually hate writing and so I’m already questioning why in the world I would have chosen to start a blog. But I digress. It’s probably going to last for a few weeks, and then I’ll forget all about it. Just like I forgot all about my pottery class at the Y. That was a real gas. I went once and decided that I’d rather be cleaning the bathrooms.

My inspiration in life is my Mom. She dealt with my Dad until their divorce, and put up with his alcoholism, verbal abuse, and gambling addiction. In the end, it was his philandering that was her last straw. She left my Dad only ten years ago, and we were all shocked. I am one of four siblings myself, and none of us saw it coming. Well, my brother John still lived at home with them, and so he had to have known. He lost his job and couldn’t find another one, then his wife left him, and he broke his leg in three places in a car accident.

He must have been going crazy with them. John is supportive of my pregnancy, probably more than anyone else. He has two boys, but doesn’t get to see them. His wife hired an expensive lawyer who tricked the judge into thinking John was a drug abuser. It was all very clever. My brother does some weed, and he smokes a lot. But it never got in the way of his family or career. But his wife used that to skewer him.

I just know I want a vaginal birth. My first three were, and I am just concerned about the trend of more C-sections during the pandemic. My entire prenatal adventure has been sort of dampened by the fact that it’s during a time of so much health uncertainty. I was thinking of getting a doula. We’ll see.

Donating Our Old Clothes

It’s true that I’m a hoarder.

I can’t help it.

But when we went in the basement and realized that my kids’ old clothing is taking up a space that would be better served as a playroom for them, I got to thinking.

I wanted to donate my kids’ old clothes, but I had no idea where I could bring them. I was looking for a charity that donates the clothes right in the neighborhood, and not a for-profit business or a charity that takes the clothes and gives them to people halfway across the world.

There is poverty right in our backyards! Literally! The street behind ours has a ton of Section 8 housing, and there are many families that could use some help. But I don’t know them personally.

I found a good answer. There’s a charity called the Assertive Kids Foundation. They take used kids clothes. So if you’re looking for a Staten Island clothes donation place, this is it.

This charity is different. They actually take photos and show you where your kids clothes went. And, sometimes, you even get to see pictures of the children receiving the clothes. That is rewarding, and I know it also helps prevent fraud.

I think that if we all chip in and try harder to end poverty, it can happen. Poverty can be a thing of the past. I know that if every person donated their old clothes instead of just throwing them away, that would be a good start.

I have a story. My Mom was on vacation with her parents. My grandfather wanted his kids to see what poverty was like firsthand. And so, on the way to Florida driving by car, he and his family stopped at a town in Alabama. My Mom said that they met a family that worked at a local kitchen, and they made friends. The difference was, the kids had shoes with holes in them, the kids didn’t have many toys, and their home was a shack.

If the United Nations Ending Poverty Program meets its goal, poverty will become a thing of the past. But think about it: If we all took the time to help those local people in our own communities, life would improve for us all.

Getting back to my story about my Grandfather, he gifted the family with his own suitcase of clothes for the Dad. My Grandfather had also secretly packed a large bag full of kids clothes, as he had this planned for a while.

The family was in tears, and were very grateful. The recipients were not people of color, but poverty is color-blind. I think the story went that my Mom and her family spent the entire day at their home, and learned lot about poverty in the 1970s.

Now we live in Staten Island, but my Mom grew up in Brooklyn. Her family was Jewish and Italian, and most of her relatives worked hard and seemed to look down on the poor. Her Dad showed everyone how it was done. He didn’t do it for personal glory or to impress his kids. He simply wanted his children to understand that poverty was gripping the Nation, and the only solution was to stop judging and lend a helping hand.

My Grandfather made sure his kids understood that although the family’s breadwinner worked an 80 hour week, the family still lived in a shack with a bathroom, as well as one giant room that served as a kitchen, dining room, and bedroom for both parents and kids.

Image from Parij Borgohain

Intro

Dance Or Die is a blog that will focus on everyday life. My everyday life. If you are a person who finds daily life exciting, then this is the blog for you. The reason I chose this name was because I had this idea in my head of having a dance competition where the winner is whoever can continue to dance straight through, without taking a break.

I admit that maybe this isn’t the best name, but creativity is not my best strength. I mean, I was very creative in naming my three kids. Maybe you won’t agree? My children are named Darah Chloe, Jennsen Hunter, and Camilla Destiny. As you may have guessed, my second child is a boy, and the other two are girls.

My girls all take dance. But they are so lazy. After a few minutes of practicing their moves, they want to sit and watch TV. As you may have guessed, both my girls are slightly overweight. Jennsen Hunter is just the opposite. He can’t stop moving, but his interest lies in martial arts.

I hope that these blogs bring a smile to your face, or at least cause a few chuckles. My stories are funny, but that’s only because I’m looking back at them now.

Image from Meine Reise geht hier leider zu Ende. Märchen beginnen mit