Our Bodies, (More than) Ourselves

Today to start the New Year and decade off right, my wife and I went up to Calestoga to Indian Springs Resort & Spa for a mud bath, mineral bath, and massage. It was all that you might imagine: relaxing, rejuvenating, cleansing, healing.

In the middle of my massage, I had one of those experiences you sometimes get with body work. The masseuse was cradling my right foot, rubbing in some oil and massaging it. All at once, I was brought back to the period just after my mother passed away five years ago. My sister and I had both traveled from other cities to my mother's home in Denver and had spent the previous weeks living with and taking care of her. We were closer than we'd been in years. At some point, Ann remarked that I have my mother's feet. And, any time she wanted to see my mother's feet again, she could just look at mine. When the masseuse touched my feet, I thought of this, and of the foot massages I'd given my mother. A wave of grief washed over me.

Since my early adulthood (about the same time as the publication of the groundbreaking book Our Bodies, Ourselves), I have found small reminders of my parents and grandparents built into my body. The skin on my hands crack in the winter, just like my farmer grandfather's, even though I don't have to brave the prairie winds. And, I've often said that I learned how to make my mother's pie crust by mentally superimposing her hands over mine as I worked.

But, in fact, this is small potatoes. The actual threads go back much farther and deeper, don't they? Another episode that occurred right after my mother's death was that my brother invited me to participate in the Genographic Project. He had submitted a DNA swab, and he needed one of his sisters to submit an equivalent sample in order to get information about which migration group our ancient ancestors were part of, once they left Africa. In our case, it turned out we had the most common Northern European haplogroup characteristics. That is to say, after leaving Africa, there was a migration to Asia (a right turn), and then a migration to Europe (a left turn). My brother's response was simply, "I'm Chinese!"

My thought is that, with the fate of the planet on the line, it's well to keep in mind that we're all related, as Rick James would say, from our heads down to our toenails.