Tag: NORTH BEACHES

The Surprising Shiatsu Massage Miracle Worker Guy

A story about a pain-in-the-neck visitor and how a miracle worker helped me through it

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I awoke with an awful and mysterious pain in my neck.  It was bad.  About an 8.5 on the scale and it felt stiff and sore as hell.  I was nauseous too.

It was 1997.  Scar-beria in the North, North Beaches at Birchmount and the Danforth where Dean and I were renting a fabulous red-brick two and a half story house.  It had a shot-gun back yard that Delta and Grizzly loved and would fly off the back deck to chase down squirrels to the perimeter, tales wagging and barking all the way.  We had just exited the Arctic and on to a new adventure starting in the GTA. (We have moved six times since then.)

I had received a call from my Dad who was in Niagara Falls then.  He wanted me to come visit regularly.  He wanted to form some sort of better relationship with me now that we were relatively close by.  The following words came out of my mouth, as if with a mind of their own,

‘Why not come visit me, Dad?  You could see our new place and we could have a walk on the Bluffs and see all the gorgeous estates and pretty fall colours.’

Pause.

Okay I will, he said.  Give me some directions and I’ll come next week on Tuesday.

Tuesday has no feel, I thought, an automatic comedic reply, in my head, from a favourite TV show: Seinfeld.  I’ll make you lunch, Dad.

Okay…so now what?  My stomach roiled.  My forehead beaded with sweat.  My heart pounded. I was having a stress response and his visit was a week away.  Yikes.

The following morning, I awoke with the stiff, sore neck.  I searched the Beaches huge paper phone book (what’s that?)  for a massage therapist who could help me.  I made a bunch of calls but the only guy who was available asap was the guy mentioned in the title of this post.  I went for it.  Immediately.  That’s how afraid I was of this pain.

I drove down there and parallel parked in front of his address.  I literally was saying ouch, ouch, ouch, ahhh as I struggled to turn my head to maneuver into the spot.

I had never had a shiatsu massage so, I was really unsure of what to expect.  Having spoken to the guy on the phone, he sounded so nice and sincere, I was feeling hopeful.  Something had to help this pain in my neck.

When I walked into his therapy room, I saw a futon mattress on the floor covered with a perfectly white sheet.  He was dressed in white also and he had this curly head of blond hair and this angelic face that he turned toward me.  He had a dozen or so years on me and he remained kneeling on the futon in hero pose as he gestured for me to have a seat so we could have a chat before treatment. He positioned himself so that I didn’t have to turn or cock my head in order to look at him. The tears were already spilling down my cheeks.

Oh dear, he said.  Martha, why not tell me what’s going on?  When did the pain start and what’s happening in your life right now?

I told him the pain arrived out of nowhere.  Woke up with it.  Told him I was feeling very anxious about my Dad coming to visit and that we had a tough relationship.  Then I said…

He’s a real pain in the neck.

Ahhh, he said gently.  That sounds like it could be the problem.  Parents can be the source of a lot of stress.

I was making ahuh sounds wanting to nod but unable to at this point. (K, while I am writing this, there is this pain creeping into my neck…sympathy pain for that younger version of myself, perhaps).

He asked me the exact plans for the visit.  This guy was into concrete details, not airy-fairy.  I was liking him more and more as I am a very concrete-type person.  I told him that I was going to show my dad around and make lunch for him and then take him for a walk down to the Bluffs.

He asked, what sort of food does your Dad like?

I said, he likes steak and blue cheese and almost everything besides that.  He likes black coffee and desserts too.  He’s a good eater, I said.

Well, then how about a steak salad with blue cheese crumbled on top, said Mr Angelic Shiatsu Massage Guy.

Was this guy for real?  He was truly helping me.

He said when a stressful visitor is coming, it’s a good idea to have a set plan for the visit, with an end point (have something to do on the other end that brings it to a close, in this case it would be the 2:30 rush hour GTA traffic to be avoided at all costs).  Have a menu and be organized.  Next, realize that you are in control of this visit and that it is on your turf and that ninety-nine percent of things we fret and worry about never actually happen.  Have low expectations of your visitor so he doesn’t disappoint you again.  Realize that he is him and you are you.  You are an adult now, Martha.  No need to let him infect you any longer.

The pain was subsiding while he gently and sincerely spoke these words to me.

He then had me lie down on my belly on the pristine white sheet and he worked on my neck, shoulders and back.  He worked my arms and fingers too and moved to my feet.  By the end of it I was a jellyfish on the sand.  All pain was gone.

I will never forget this miracle worker who helped me through this stressful event.  It was the best sixty bucks I ever spent.

So, Dad showed up on Tuesday at 11 am. (My husband Dean was downtown Toronto at iti, as he was on an intensive 9 month course). Dad was on his best behaviour.  He was charming and funny and polite.  He loved our house and lunch made him speechless.  The steak salad with crumbled blue cheese turned out to be fabulous with garlic toast and butter tarts for dessert with black coffee.  He was eating out of my hand by the end of it. (Figuratively speaking).

We waddled down the hill to the Scarborough Bluffs and walked in the park there with the dogs also on their best behaviour, for once.  The whole visit was incredible.  Then Dad looked at his watch and said he should hit the road back to Niagara Falls.  He gave me a peck on the cheek and off he went, with a butter tart and a black coffee for the road.

One thing for sure, that pain in the neck got my attention.  It made me seek help and because I really needed it, I was open to receive the help.  It equipped me for future pain-in-the-neck challenges and helped me to realize that most of the things we worry about never even happen.

Most of them.

Sublime: Perfect. Without Blemish

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it. ~Dalai Lama

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After exiting the Arctic , where we lived for three years, give or take, I applied for a job from an ad in the Globe & Mail Newspaper.  A recruiting firm was looking to hire a House Manager for a wealthy family; let’s call them The Roses in Toronto’s Rosedale.  Eagerly, I applied for the position thinking that I had the attributes mentioned in the ad.

I made the cut.

At the end of the first interview with Braun the hiring manager, I asked him why they picked me out of the three hundred applicants.  He said they liked both my creative leaf-art at the bottom of my resume as well as my military experience.  Both sides of the brain.

Braun had spent the better part of a dozen years working for the Beaten Family and he knew the kind of person that would do well in this job.  Detail-oriented, strong work ethic, well-spoken, able to foresee disasters and their solutions, appreciative of wealth but not themselves wealthy and, let’s not forget, approval-seeking.  Yep.  I had all of those qualities.

After the second interview with the agency, I was told I would next be going to the offices of Mr Rose to be interviewed by him.  I made sure to have a sturdy note pad, and a good pen.  I donned my navy blazer, blouse and skirt.  For the first time I was missing my military uniform which made wardrobe decisions so easy.  In my mind, I was a Captain heading to a meeting with a General.  Just putting it into perspective.

It went well.  I could tell Mr Rose was happy with my confident eye-contact, my note-taking and my questions.  My seriousness but also my quick smile.  I even managed to negotiate my salary up to the next notch, which I could tell both amused and impressed him.

He told me that the next step would be to visit with his family.  Meet them, tour the houses and property.  Get an idea of the scope of the job.

I had been told they were a Jewish family.  Knowing nothing about the Jewish faith, I sought the opinion of a Jewish acquaintance.  He said my visit would be during one of the Jewish holidays – Rosh Hashanah.  I was nervous about being the House Manager for a family with a completely unfamiliar faith to the one I had known growing up.  I was bound to make mistakes, even subtle ones, just because I had no idea.

At the time, I was reading a book by Deepak Chopra.  In this book, he advised to always show up with a small gift when going to someone’s house.  Wise advise, I thought.  I picked up a small box of chocolates and made sure they were kosher.  I donned my conservative atire and grabbed my sturdy note pad and reliable pen.

I drove into their estate in my 3-cylinder shit box I called ‘Puny’.  The same one I had bought before leaving Comox in 1988.

The house was modern and grand.  I knocked on the door and smiled gently as I was met by Mrs Rose.  I passed her the little box of chocolates and made nicey-nice while she showed me the huge kitchen and writing nook where she wrote her cookbooks.  Then Mr Rose took me to the other house which backed onto theirs.

His 4000 square foot Man Cave.

The door opened to a dining room with a chandelier bigger than me and a table which sat twenty-two.  Enough said. The place was perfect.  A lot of brown and beige tones with the odd hint of deep burgundy.  Very mannish.  He told me, and this was important, ‘I want this place to always be absolutely sublime‘.

K, I didn’t even know what sublime meant back then.

The first thing I did upon getting back to Scarberia (North Beaches really but, whatever) was look it up.

Sublime: Perfect, without blemish.

I was sweating.

I knew I could do this job, but, did I WANT to?  It sounded like a lot of bullshit to me.  My mind imagined my days on that property.  Worried about every little thing.  I was completely stressed just thinking about it.  When Dean and I had traveled to Australia, we had seen the movie: The Remains of The Day.  Was I meant to be a glorified Butler / House Keeper; a combination of both Anthony Hopkins’ and Emma Tompsins’ characters? Was I to walk around with a feather duster and white gloves?

Then, the call came.  Braun the Hiring Manager was dressing me down for bringing a box of chocolates to the interview at their home.  He told me it was inappropriate.  Mr Rose had mentioned it and said it was like I was trying to ‘butter’ them up to hire me.  Geez.  This guy was a freak.  I wasn’t even hired and he was already disappointed in me.

phone boothI remained silent when Braun stopped speaking.  I was in a phone booth in the village of Maggie River on Eight Mile Lake, near The Camp in Cottage Country of Ontario.  It was a gorgeous early summer day.  I looked at the shiny water near the locks.  I looked at the nodding heads of the wild flowers growing in every possible crack or fissure.

Sublime: Perfect. Without Blemish.

flower

I took a deep breath and told Braun that I was no longer interested in the position.  I said, ‘If Mr Rose is that worried about a proffered tiny box of chocolates, I don’t think I can work for him.  I don’t want to work for people like that.  Sorry.’

Braun was speechless.  He had invested a lot of time in me.  He would have to start over.

‘You mean, you don’t want to work for The Rose Family?  At that salary?  Maybe I can get you more money, M.’

‘Sorry, Braun.  I can’t do it.  It’s not for me.’

I walked away from that phone booth feeling a massive weight lift off my shoulders.  I felt like I had dodged a bullet.  Next, I went for a swim in the shiny waters of Eight Mile Lake.

Sublime: Perfect. Without Blemish.

clip

(All pictures come from Google Images.  Thank you!)

Exiting the Arctic

Having lived three years above the Arctic Circle, Dean’s acceptance into a post-grad program in Toronto sees us driving South on Boxing Day 1996…

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On boxing day of 1996 we packed up our tiny little three cylinder Chevrolet Sprint hatchback aptly named Puny, put our two big northern dogs (Delta and Grizzly) and our wee tabby cat (Sahtu) in the backseat, and started our 7000 km, eight day trip south west to Toronto. Dean was enrolled in a nine month intensive Information Technology program at a downtown Toronto school called Information Technology Institute (iti). We had spent three years above the Arctic Circle living in Arctic Red River for one year first and then Inuvik. We had had good employment and a great group of friends but, it was time to move on and start something new.

As we rolled out of Inuvik on the Dempster Highway, in the dead and dark of winter and -35 Celsius, we were not unaware of the risk of travel for the first 800 kms of this road trip south to Dawson City, Yukon with just one gas station at Eagle Plains, about half way. The moonlight shone above us and lighted the way over North America’s most northerly and remote highway, which in fact is actually a gravel road.  It was a good omen, I thought, that moon.  It was sure to be a fine trip with a moon like that shining above us and leading us on.

Just to give some idea of our situation in the car.  We had huge Canada Goose parkas on. Large layered mittens, a woolen toque each and Sorel boots rated to -60.  It being so bitingly cold outside, our little car could not keep up.  We just broke even for heat, which means, we were quite chilly for the first couple of days.  Few people had cell phones back then.  A friend in Inuvik had given us his cell phone in case we ran into an emergency.

Not long into the trip, we realized that our front windshield was frosting up, even though the fan and heat were turned on high.  It didn’t take much to figure out that the fan had stopped working.  Our focal point out the front of the car was rapidly diminishing.  I wanted to turn back and get it fixed.  Dean said no, we could do that in Dawson.  Just then Delta and Grizzly lunged into the front seat, their heads and shoulders anyway, because they had sensed a heard of caribou moving methodically across the dim tundra. Our wee vehicle was surrounded by their graceful presence. (Like the picture below, only dark outside).  We felt honoured to be in the midst of their serenity. Delta and Grizzly just wanted to give chase.  On we rolled.

caribou on highway, Dempster Highway, snow, winter
Dempster Highway, caribou crossing, late winter

We pulled into Dawson City Yukon and it was -45 degrees Celcius.  Nothing was open in town so we retreated to the corner of the highway and stayed in a motel there. Carefully plugging in our car so that there would be every chance that it would start in the morning.  After a satisfying turkey dinner, hot shower and good night’s sleep we breakfasted and clambered back into Puny.  Dead.  Upon examination of the cord we found that someone had stepped on it (probably me) and with the cold, it had snapped. Useless.  We would need a ‘cold start’ at $50. It worked and we rolled out of Dawson on square tires due to the extreme cold.  We were Whitehorse bound with the hopes of getting our heater fan fixed.  In Whitehorse, at Crappy (a playful nickname for Canadian Tire, a store we actually really liked) we were able to get it repaired.  The service department stayed open late for us and were very kind.

The most remarkable thing about the rest of the trip, which we were already aware of due to several cross-country drives, was the shear vastness and emptiness of our big beautiful country.  The Prairies were endless and so windy that Puny burned twice as much fuel as usual. The Prairies in the winter had white-outs and dangerous snow drifts right across the highway. Dean, my Newfoundlander, is an amazing winter driver so I wasn’t too worried, really.

We finally pulled into Toronto seven days later.  Our friend Nee was home and we crashed in with him.  He had found us an apartment right behind his on St. Clair. Excitedly we went to look at it.  Sadly and disappointingly though, it was little more than a slum and was a serious firetrap. It just would not do. We had stupidly paid the slum-landlord first and last month rent, from afar, sight unseen.  Bad idea.  When we met her she tried to tell us the place was fine: rotten wood floors, drafty or broken old windows, old, dirty paint, crappy old kitchen and ancient wiring.

We told her we wanted our money back.

She and Dean were in the kitchen and  I was standing in the kitchen doorway.  She stamped her foot and said this is ridiculous and tried to get past me through the door.  I stood my ground and filling up the doorway space said not sweetly: Where do you think you’re going?  She turned around and filled out an ad for the apartment telling us that if it were to rent, we would get our money back.  Next, we called the fire marshal who declared the place a fire hazard.  We got our money back.

The next day we found a 2.5 story brick house with a great kitchen, hardwood floors, attic study and a fenced yard in the North Beaches at Birchmount and the Danforth.  It was ideal and cheaper at $900 a month.

Dean started his program and worked like a dog, ending in nine months as the Valedictorian of his class.  While he did his program, I decided to volunteer at my sister, Eva’s camp as much as possible.  We ended up putting on a week-long boys’ camp which was a lot of work but truly successful and rewarding for everyone involved.  I also helped with small maintenance jobs, errands, painting and cleaning duties. It was a very good summer and it was so fun to be with my big sister and at the camp again.

In the fall we bought our first little house in Milton, Ontario upon the advice of a savvy Real Estate agent and Newfoundlander with an office in Campbellville.  Our side-split bungalow was on an older street with tall trees. Dean had gotten a job as a technology trainer and was traveling a lot.  While he did that, I fashioned a small apartment in our basement and rented it to a nice young couple. Next, there was an offer by Dean’s company for us to move to Virginia. We sold our house to the first people who walked through and off we went to Leesburg, Virginia.  Nine months later, Leo was born. We were over the moon until…but that’s another post.

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