I Am Foot-Washed

I cycled to my allotment first thing - let's say 7.00am. It was a continual and sun-washed morning in this long drought of UK summer, and even though I wasn't as hot as I've been in recent days, I relished the gift of water lurching from the watering can onto my feet as I splashed the courgettes, beans, tomatoes, and the monstrous one-fruit-a-day cucumber plant which has taken occupation of the greenhouse. 

As the first washing included a residue of allotment soil, I carried out a quick second rinsing of my feet in the afternoon prior to going out again. I book a massage from time to time - it requires forward-booking and then, as is my wont, a last minute dash to be ready to go. 

My organised part, let's call her Kanga, anticipates my need to be taken out of my tendency to busyness to balance the way I (my Rabbit part) fill my days with the work ethic which runs into me like a given, a sort of kettle flex, rarely switched off at the mains. Booking a massage means bracketing a requirement to lie down in comfort and receive the carefully learned ways of therapeutic touch, the ways that seek out the spaces between my tension and my need.

The third washing of my feet today was offered by Maddy who is a wonderful holistic massage therapist. The place was a bowl of warm water and Epsom salts in an upper room at Neals Yard, Shrewsbury. She suggested it as the ritual start to my Deep Peace massage and I said yes. It sounded practical given the allotment soil still staining my soles.

The third washing - well, it brought me to tears. The gentleness, the care shown: Maddy kneeling at my feet, not as servant, not holier than me, but woman-to-woman, practical, thoughtful, smiling. There was a grace in the way she listened to my over-exertion then spoke with authority to the part of me that's more used to kneeling than being knelt to: the part that digs potatoes, cleans the communal stairs, listens to those who cannot stand up, searches, searches for a lost coin that does not want to be found. 

This third washing - the blessing of it - was ordinary sacrament: the generosity of the foot-soak-flannel-wipe-towel-pat-pat. This readying of my body to to receive the smoothing out, the soothing out of heat: of heat and thought and striving.

Thank you water, thank you skilled hands, thank you graciousness.