Last week, we had our friends Rick and Deb over for dinner. We were going
through an especially rough time, not having seen Dan’s daughter C for a
long while and not having access to her, and Rick and Deb have been a
strong set of shoulders for us to lean on. We got to talking about what we
could do in terms of keeping the faith when Rick suggested we all go to a
“sweat lodge.”
I had never heard of a sweat lodge before so I was intrigued. What is
it? Do they keep the heat over 75? Do they do hot yoga? Give pedicures by
moistening the skin so intensely that it just flakes off on its own—no
scraping or rubbing required? Do they let you sample a variety of
hydration beverages? Do some sort of mud wrap that brings all the toxins
to the surface so you look younger? Have less cellulite? I had so many
questions.
So Rick and Deb told me that it was an ancient Native American ceremony
of prayer and purification that involved heating rocks in a fire, bringing
them into the center of the lodge, pouring water on them so they steam,
and praying.
Is there Jesus talk, because, you know, I’m Jewish. We don’t
generally pray to Jesus.
No, it’s all very spiritual and soul-cleansing.
Like a colonic?
Well, not as graphic.
Good, because my mother worked for a proctologist when I was
growing up and an enema was her cure-all, so I have issues.
Too much information.
Does it involve some alternative language, like Hebrew, say, or
Swahili? Cause I don’t speak either.
No, prayer could be words or songs or silence. Even chanting.
I like chanting. I do it all the time in the shoe department at
Nordstroms. "Do you really need those? YES YES YES NO YES OH GOD YES."
This isn't anything at all like Nordstroms.
That's okay. Will there be pound cake? There’s usually pound cake
after services at a synogague.
Well, no. But there’ll be a pot luck feast, so we each have to bring
something to eat.
Oh, okay, good. So you're saying there might be pound cake, then?
As we played Q&A, I let my mind conjure up the image of a peaceful
getaway at a well-kept spa in an exotic location. Where you can call upon
the spirits to relax you enough to soothe your puffy eyes, eliminate
unnecessary wrinkles, and leave you feeling younger, thinner, and less
hungry for pizza or tuna salad with REAL mayonnaise. It sounded like a
place to commune with aestheticians for a reasonable price. And then,
attend a nice buffet of cold items, perhaps a nice pasta salad with pesto
or cold shrimp.
This could be very Las Vegas meets the Berkshires, I thought to myself.
Upscale gym meets Ruby Tuesdays. Hot springs meet Denny’s. What could be
bad?
I’m in. Let’s do it.
So we did. With much excitement and anticipation, we went on a Sunday
night, two days after a late March ice storm that laid a dirty carpet of
hard snow on the grass and roads. Dan and I picked up Rick and Deb after a
brief stop at Giant to get a set of broccoli and mushroom quiches and a
tub of hummus. (Rick had suggested we bring something “sort of vegan-y.”)
We were excited. We’d had enough of the cold and looked forward to the
warmth of the lodge. I was looking forward to some effective moisturizing
after.
As we pulled up a long driveway to somebody’s backyard (who I would
later learn was “Jim”), we saw several people standing around a fire by an
old garage. A few sat on an old bench next to a wooden fence. We followed
Rick and Deb into the old single house to put away the food we had brought
for after “the sweat.”
I asked Deb, “Where’s the lodge?” After all, I didn’t see anything in
the back yard but the fire, the people, and the garage. Did we have to
go somewhere else to get there? Would there be a shuttle? Did it have a
bathroom? (I pee a lot.)
She took my hand, led me back out to the people and the bonfire, and
pointed to a small blue dome behind them. It looked like a latex igloo,
large enough to sleep two at a campsite.
“What’s that?” I said.
“The sweat lodge.”
“That’s it?” My heart started to race.
“That’s it.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Oh.”
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Everything after that happened fast. The girls got changed into shorts,
tee shirts, and flip flops in what I assumed was Jim’s bedroom, while the
guys changed in the old garage. We grabbed our towels on the way back out
and covered ourselves with sweatshirts that, just moments later, would be
yanked off and flung to the side just prior to entering “the lodge.”
Scantily clad (for me, at least), in bare feet, and shivering, I waited
in line behind Dan for safety. When it was his turn to go in, a skinny
guy, who was topless, waved a piece of lit sage around his body as if he
were drying an SUV just out of the car wash. Then, he instructed my poor
husband to get on his hands and knees and crawl through a brown slushy
pool of God-knows-what to get into the small latex igloo. I was next.
“You okay?” Dan asked, once I found a place crammed next to him.
“Don’t touch anything,” I whispered, picking a piece of something
disgusting off the bottom of my foot and wondering why I wasn’t getting a
hot stone facial at Zanya's. Big mistake. “You don’t know where this dirt
has been.”
He looked at me like I had hit my head on one of the tree branches upon
entry. “It’ll be okay, honey. You’ll be fine. This is fun. Something
different, right.”
I wanted to slap him. Did something in the lodge cause a sudden
misfiring of synapses in his brain? Fun? Crawling through winter muck is
fun? I look down at my foot. The brown thing isn't coming off so easily.
Some 15 minutes later, with 28 or so of us crammed together like mixed
nuts, Jim, otherwise known as Painted Arrow or some such title, called for
the first rock. That’s when one skinny kid yanked a white hot rock from
the fire and passed it with something that looked like a pitchfork made of
sticks to another skinny kid who dropped it into a hole in the center of
the tent. They did that six times as Jim chanted, “Welcome Grandfather”--a
nod to the fact that they were very old rocks.
After the old guys were all in, Jim instructed the skinny people to
close the flap on the tent, eliminating any remaining light. Since there
was no longer a difference when I opened my eyes and closed them, I opted
for the latter. (What I couldn't attempt to see couldn't hurt me.)
I grabbed Dan’s knee for comfort and grounding, and listened as Jim
poured several dollops of water over the rocks, like a gang member firing
off an AK47 (or whatever). Steam danced and hissed around us.
We all started to sweat like ice cubes in an incinerator, as Jim led us
in a conversation about war, and why our world was in such turmoil. I
thought about the lavender-scented fern-decorated old-but-pristine and
moderately heated old lodge somebody else—somewhere—might be sitting in,
blissfully, and reasonably detoxifying. Lemon water waiting for them when
they finished.
How did I get here, I wonder, recognizing that it’s not excess saliva
on my teeth, but a composition of oozing fluid and electrolytes? Then I
remembered.
Oh Great Spirit, Jim says, we are living in such a
volatile time. The girl next to me leans in and quietly informs me
she’s not wearing underwear. The girl in front of me (or rather,
literally, now ON me, as she attempts to get further away from the hot
rocks) starts dry heaving and belching.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
“Oh yes, thanks. This is normal.”
“Gotcha.” I reach for Dan’s hand and go to my happy place—Starbucks, an
egg nog latte has just been delivered to my quivering lips, I prepare to
drink..
I hang on to that thought, while the white hot rocks cause me to sweat
more than I ever have previously--more than I do at the thought of having
actually married Todd Goldman when I was 29 (can you say “sociopath?”).
Or, at the memory of walking in the city while, unbeknownst to me, a
faulty set of buttons left me exposed to all of 8th and Walnut Streets. (I
thought it felt awfully breezy.)
After I listened to a few people pray to the “Great Spirit” for a good
bounty, useful creativity, and food for third-world children, I decided to
ignore the fact that I was on fire without being in actual flames and
participate. So I spoke up, “Oh Great Spirit,” I said. “Thank you for
keeping me hyperconscious in this heat.”
Nobody even tittered at the profound realism of my prayer (except, of
course, my devoted husband). It surprised me. I mean if you can’t
recognize something smart or call upon a good sense of humor when you’ve
been spit into an active volcano, when can you? What are you waiting for?
My skin was starting to crisper like an oversized overcooked piece of
turkey bacon. I wanted to cry, but couldn't risk losing the body fluids.
And yet, not even the thought of mushroom quiche or lemon hummus could
save me at that point. So I had to distract myself from the agony of the
man with the trigger finger--Jim and his little bucket of death water.
And then here, I suspect, is where the whole point of the experience
hit me.
Because suddenly, like a gold rush, thoughts of wishing we could see C
overcame me. I prayed that, if and when we do, she remembers how much we
love her. I encouraged myself to get busy writing that book. After all, my
time was coming. I had earned it, deserved it, worked hard to get here. It
was time to recommit to the momentum—and the task of doing it. And then I
thought about my father, who survived lung cancer two years ago. We all
live on borrowed time, and I prayed for the longest extension possible
from his lender.
In that moment, I gave my sweat reason and purpose. And as it dripped
off of me and onto the wet soil under my own dampness, I felt my thoughts
lifting, floating straight up through a tiny hole in the blue bubble and
onto, well, somewhere.
Suddenly, everything got oddly moving. I wanted to cry for Sophie and
for my grandmother, who died when I was 13. If I was a Russian spy, I
suspect now would've been the time to interrogate me. The heat was like
the ultimate truth serum. It was both dangerous and exhilerating.
And as I listened to the girl in front of me belch and Jim chant and
Dan breathe in long familiar gusts, and as I felt the girl next to me
fidget with her skirt, and as I clung to the cool dirt beneath my
fingertips, I stopped wondering why people came to endure such discomfort.
I couldn’t tell if there were tears in my eyes or my corneas were
perspiring. And yet, it didn’t matter.
These were all strange revelations—that I was hot and emotional and it
didn’t matter—and I detached from them almost immediately. (As soon as Jim
said, "That's it. Open up.")
I guess you can only hold on for so long after surviving a 45-minute
schvitzfest and then crawling out of a tent into 32 degrees. I felt like a
drug addict leaving a heroin convention—all woozy, wet, and spent.
“Go ahead and lay on the ice,” Jim says, as he ushers us out like a
bunch of termites from a damp basement. “You’ll love it.”
“The man must be drunk,” I muttered to myself as I tried to stand
upright on the icy ground without shrieking like an African monkey. My now
soaking tank top and thinly insulated Gap Body cotton Capri pants failing
miserably. Although, I did manage to find my way to my flip flops and
towel rather quickly, an act marked by relative calm and a real feeling of
accomplishment. Then, I stood with Dan, wet arm in wet arm, in front of
the still blazing campfire to revel in the fact that we had survived.
I had survived, breathing in fire and breathing out something else that
let me know I was alive. Now, out of the sweat tent (because I refuse to
call it a lodge), back to 98 degrees Fahrenheit, I felt like I had just
repaved all the streets in the city in 45 minutes. Overcome a personal
hostage situation. Endured a plane crash. It was surprise to me, this
feeling that was both thrilling and horrifying.
I could pretty much survive anything. Probably. Yes. I can. Dan's ex. A
publisher's rejection. Half a pound a week in weight loss.
As I stood there, watching the belcher, the girl going commando, and a
crew of others lay down on the ground as if they had been shot by airfire,
I had an ephipany. I would not do that. I would be a leader, not a
follower. I'd be me, and not somebody else.
After all, while they may have craved deeper meaning in the Jackson
Pollack painting of the sky, I craved deodorant, a dry tee shirt, lip
gloss, and chocolate. To make sense of any of this, I needed to get back
to the real world—my real world—and hydrate. Moisturize. And nurture my
body with some very VERY bad carbohydrates.
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Before the sweat, while I was getting ready, I met a woman named
Rosemary in the bedroom. We were down to our bras and undies so there
seemed no need for small talk. It was obvious we were both freshmen.
“First time?” she asked.
I nodded. She smiled. And we finished changing. It was the kind of
exchange you’d have with a woman while you waited to get your first
mammogram.
Now, hydrated, dry, and relaxed in the way you are when you know your
surgery is behind you, we met up again over a table of curried rice, too
much hummus (a popular item), salad, and chili.
“Well?” she said, putting a scoop of brown rice and peas on her plate.
“What did you think?”
I thought hard for a moment. “It sure was hot in there.” When it doubt,
go with the obvious.
She laughed. “I’ll say.”
I scooped a piece of quiche onto my plate and spread some hummus on
top. (I’m weird, I know.) “I liked some of it and didn’t like some of it.”
She nodded her head. “Yeah. Good way to put it.”
“It was hot in there.”
She laughed. “Too hot.”
“Thank you.”
“So hot that I really couldn’t focus on anything other than….”
“How hot you were?”
“Yes.”
Turns out, I wasn’t the only person in there after all. Sensing that we
had bonded, I really opened up. “It was just stupid hot.” I wondered if
she knew how to play the air guitar.
“Yes. Really. Just hot.”
We shared a moment of soulful eye contact and then, I said this: “Have
you tried the hummus?”
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The best part of the whole experience for me, at an especially hot moment,
when I thought I couldn’t take anymore, was holding my husband’s sweaty
palm. And knowing that we were in it for the long haul.
That no matter what happened in life—a dying dog, a real estate deal
gone sour, a misguided ex-wife, cancer, old age, a slowing metabolism,
menopause, the loss of one daughter, the joy of seeing another give birth,
rejection from book publishers and music studios, acceptance from book
publishers and music studios, the court's misjudgement, hearing from an
old friend, remembering childhood, making peace with fat knees, forgetting
what it was like to have perfect eyesight, laughing, crying, singing,
dancing, reeling in agony, and rejoicing—that we would always be okay.
And together.
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As I look back on the experience, I have to question why we put
ourselves through so much suffering to realize things. I think about the
contortions of yoga, the exhaustion of aerobics, the pain and agony of
self-actualization. I mean, can’t we figure it out on a nice spring day,
on a walk with our dogs, smiling at our neighbors? Watching reruns of
Jeopardy? Or laying on four inches of memory foam, listening to the toilet
drip before we fall asleep?
Can’t we just know because we do that life gives us a little bit of
everything and never an excess of anything and that we don’t need to cause
our own suffering to come to this conclusion.
I mean, sweating and all is great. In fact, my skin did glow for about
a week after. (Although I didn’t lose a pound and we still can’t see or
talk to C.) And I might even do it again, if somebody, say, put a Rufie in
my drink or threatened to kill my family.
I guess.
Still, I also know here, in the comfort of my temperature-adjusted home
with cable and raspberry-flavored Aquafina, exactly what I knew then in
the sweat igloo: That it’s up to us.
It’s all up to us. Whatever “it” is? Well, that’s up to us too. It was
up to me to sweat like an snowman in Aruba and I got it out of my system
(along with who knows what else) and now, well, I'm glad I did it.
But do I need to do it again? I don't know. For now, I’m just looking
for something crunchy. (It's moon time.)
So, until next time.
