Hands and Feet
On sensory overwhelm and embodiment
Gramzi lifted her hands, knobby with arthritis, and motioned for me to come closer. In my memory, we are in the basement of my parents’ house, which makes sense. Gramzi was probably staying in the downstairs guest room, where she would have placed her silver framed portrait of her late husband, my grandfather, on the bedside table next to her analogue travel clock and her dish for her gold necklaces and bracelets.
She said, in her New York accent that made “water” come out like “wuh-duh,” that she was going to teach me to enjoy a foot massage. Her slippers padded into her bedroom for lotion, probably a specific cream one of her friends brought her from Germany.
Upstairs in the kitchen, she created a washing basin of warm sudsy water. She soaked my ten-year-old feet and scrubbed my toenails with a small brush. Then she dried my feet and worked the lotion into a lather, her thumbs kneading into my arches. I pulled back and wiggled at first. She softened her touch and adjusted the pressure. My ticklish squirming faded into a smile and an exhale. From then on, whenever we were together, at her house in Connecticut or at our house outside Chicago, Gramzi offered me and my sisters foot massages. We’d lounge on the couch with our feet in her lap, watching Sleepless in Seattle.
Around the same time, back scratching trains were big in my fourth grade class. We’d line up sitting on the floor and rub the back of the person in front of us, alternating between open-palmed rubs, bladed chops, and fingertip waves.
“Crack an egg on your head; let the yolk fall down.”
My sisters and I took to tickling each other’s feet at night. We’d position ourselves on the couch and run our fingertips up and down the length of each other’s feet while talking or reading or watching something. Dad often joined. His eyelids eventually grew heavy and his hand would slow and then slide off.
We would kick our feet to wake him, “Dad! You’re falling asleep.”
At family parties, I sat at the adult table. If Gramma Karen was next to me, I’d rest my hand on the table near hers. She would cover my hand with hers before picking it up and running her burgundy nails over the back of my hand and fingers. She’d turn my hand over to rub her thumb into my palm and squeeze my wrist.
Grandpa smoothed the front of his sweater and swirled his wine to quiet the table and lead into a story. Mom and her sisters interjected, “No it was Barbara’s sister,” or, “Well, that’s when so-and-so still lived over on such-and-such next to that blue house, the so-and-sos who Val used to babysit.”
I chewed their stories along with my food. After seconds and thirds of Uncle John’s ribeye with chimichurri sauce, roasted potatoes, and Aunt Jenny’s salad, I set my fork down, listened, and reached my hand towards Gramma’s.
Someone would look at their watch and announce it was getting late; we’d better move on to cake and presents. The evening ended in a flurry of wrapping paper, little legs and arms stuffed into footie pajamas, and a square dance of hugs and kisses.
On the bus to high school field hockey games, teammates sectioned off parts of each other’s hair, pulling them into french braids. My shoulders lowered. My eyes closed.
In photography class, my hands maneuvered blindly in the lightproof bag, feeling the parts of the film canister, loading the film onto the large spool, and sealing it inside a black plastic cylinder. I measured and poured the chemicals, rotated the container, and waited. Long curly tails of fully developed negatives hung to dry. The quiet, dimly lit darkroom was my refuge.
I pressed my right big toe into the inner arch of my left foot for a self-administered foot rub every morning, before opening my eyes, at a tiny college on a hill in the nation’s easternmost state.
You can do this. I told myself.
I made an appointment with a counselor and shared my history of separation anxiety and homesickness. She told me to focus on the feeling of my feet connecting with the earth. My eyes rolled internally. Walking back to my dorm, the Westminster Chimes played in the chapel. I paid attention to the crunch of the snow beneath the rubber soles of my snow boots. I imagined the paved pathways beneath the matted snow, the layers of soil beneath the pathways, and the bedrock beneath the soil.
The winter of senior year of college, at a different school in warmer weather, I met Marc. I remember wondering, as we were getting to know each other, how soon I could request that he rub my feet as we watched a movie.
I cannot begin to calculate how many hours he has spent—talking; watching games, movies, episodes, seasons; reading or typing, one-handed—with my feet in his lap. We’ve been together fourteen years. He says he’s getting carpal tunnel. Most nights, he carries on anyway.
In my fourth year of motherhood, I shared with a friend and mentor that my oldest was dealing with tantrums. My friend offered that squeezing her child’s joints helped calm him down. She’d press down on his shoulders, squeeze both his elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles. The next time Sophie’s body writhed, I tried this technique. As if given a tranquilizer, her body softened, breathing slowed. Her chin tipped up.
“Mom,” she said, her eyes enormous, her head limp in my lap, “who taught you that?”
Last night, I sat with my youngest reading a bedtime story. I reached down and squeezed my left hand around for her plump foot, tracing my finger all around her bare skin and tugging her piggy toes.
“Keep going,” she said, kicking her foot, when I paused to turn the page.
I came downstairs to Marc cleaning the kitchen and told him about an interview I heard on the needs of highly sensitive people. Intense depth of processing makes life an onslaught of sensory overwhelm. The central nervous system’s need for relief is high. Breathing, grounding, pressing, massaging, feeling—anything that brings attention to the physical body—is a healthy coping strategy.
“See,” I told Marc, “what you give me helps so much. It’s real.”
We retreated to the couch, where I read and he finished his movie while massaging my feet.
This morning, our three-year-old crawled into our bed and asked me to rub her back. I slid my hand under her pajama shirt and made wide circles, thinking that her head and torso are now nearly as long as her entire body was when she was born.
I’ve struggled with what to write for you here this month. A few dear writer friends have offered feedback that feels like a fountain of care. None of the pieces in my drafts folder are quite ready. Maybe, I thought yesterday, maybe I could write something that could offer a massage of sorts.
Maybe you will read this, take a deep breath, and move through your day a little more embodied, a little more okay, a little more here.
What helps you come into your body?
Your words are a balm to my soul
I love this, Kaitlin. I thought of my own stories of touch and feel so inspired to write about them.