My cousin called at noon to ask the doomed question, “If I see Potomac Mills, have I gone too far?”
“Um.”
She was on her way to pick me up for our spa day in… dun dun dun… West Virginia. Now, for those people not familiar with the West Virginia bashing culture that exists unabaited in just about every other state, this trip was a haven of generalizations, stereotypes, and plain old prejudice. It had been at least 7 years since my last trip along the highways heading west. The few other times I had ever driven into, out of, or through West Virginia, the sky between the mountains had closed in on itself in a grey haze of watery doom.
My cousin made it to my parents’ house (in Northern Virginia, a part of the state of Virginia, unlike West Virginia which is it’s own state) about a half hour later, and we were on our way. We only had about an hour and a half to make 90 miles. I navigated the ridiculous Mapquest directions and my cousin’s foot never left the gas. We were gonna make our spa date, damn it, even if we got a speeding ticket.
We were headed for Berkeley Springs. The nation’s first spa, it’s built over natural mineral springs that flow at a constant 74 degrees F. It was a spot recommended by our grandmother who was subsidizing this little adventure.
“Oh Berkeley Springs? I’ve been there. You’re massage therapist might not have all her teeth,” my mother said conjuring up one of the many West Virginia bashing traditions. “What, it’s an observation I made, not an insult,” she said.
So we were cruising up and down mountains, around bends, through some of the most beautifully forested, pastured, and textured landscape I have ever seen. The American Dream as far as the eye could see. Green and gold rolling hills butted mountains brimming with brown and grey oaks and elms reaching for the doomed sky as they slumbered in the fickle cold. Horses, goats, and occasional cows dotted the land between the barns, silos and stables. Beautiful two-story houses of wood siding, brick, and stone, sometimes all three at once, nestled between the hills. Candles glowed in their windows.
We found our way to N Frederick Pike, the highway that would take us across the border into the fabled West Virginia. The road narrowed to two-lanes as the sign welcoming us to West Virginia grew bigger. And there on the side of the road was a dead squirrel. Now a dead squirrel in any other part of the country is nothing out of the ordinary, but here we were at the line, the line at the edge of another West Virginia joke.
We sped into Berkeley Springs, and meandered into the mineral bath house 30 minutes too late.
“We can take you at 4 and 4:30,” the kindly woman with the West Virginia accent told us. So we headed out for lunch and returned early to wait.
Rachel turned to me and said, “I can see this as a place Grandma would come for a massage.”
We sat on an American designed bench with poles for backing, not the lush pillowy couches you might find at a spa in New York or California. The walls were wood paneling, the sort found in American state and national parks in the interiors of their ranger stations. Of course, that might be because the springs and spa are managed by the state of West Virginia.
“Why do these kinds of places always sell the ugliest clothing?” Rachel asked softly, looking slightly distraught as she studied each of the forest green, pink and orange T-shirts and fleece pullovers that hung along all 4 walls just below the ceiling.
We were finally taken back by a short bath attendant with thinning hair and a friendly disposition. “You can take your clothes off in there and wrap a sheet around you. And then put your things in a locker and keep the keys with you. Here,” she handed us each an envelope. “You can leave tips, but the massagers get a seperate tip.”
With a little help, we managed to open our lockers and wrapped in our togas were directed to the Roman Bath, about a 4’X7′ green tile tub with a rusted drain in the bottom. A single painted window fit into the wall, allowing bits of the grey light to filter through. The attendent took our sheets and we floated naked in the warm mineral water.
After what they said was 15 minutes, I was taken to the massage room for my 30 minute massage under the powerful hands of a 19-year-massage-veteran with a thick accent.
“Are you cold?” she asked as she massaged my neck.
“No, I’m ticklish.”
“We get a lot of those. Are you ticklish on your feet also? That will be fun. I try to keep the pressure on so it doesn’t tickle as much.”
As I lay, watching the white-washed concrete cieling and concrete bricks that made the foot thick walls dividing each massage table, while she worked out the knots in my legs, I thought to myself, this seems stereotypically communist, institutional. If we were some sort of communist country where people went to spas once a month or so, this is what the spas would look like. But, hey, I’m not complaining about the idea. Government massage programs? I’m all for it!
I was left on a cot to relax until Rachel was done with her massage. I stood when I started to fall asleep, and found her in the changing room.
“I have to tell you something,” she said, a smile on her face, the kind that screens an internal laugh fest.
“What?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re in the car.”
We headed into the cold and into the car and Rachel told me all about her massage therapist. “I was lying there, almost asleep, but my massage therapist started talking to one of the other women about how her children were molested, and how her husband sexually harrased her, but she waited to leave him until her eldest daughter was 16. And she played with her dentures. She said she didn’t have to use much oil on me because my skin was well moisturized, except my feet. She asked if I did any sports. I told her I dance. She asked ‘oh, what kind of dance?’ I told her ballet, and she said, ‘oh, no honey; you’re killing yourself.'”
Rachel went on to tell me about how much this woman had to say throughout the massage, about other clients, about a woman who bound her feet because the pain was easier to deal with, it was a way of getting back at the world, a girl who was training for the olympics in ballet and destroyed her feet, a 12-year-old swimmer who had so much muscle, it took all the strength she had to get the knots out. She told Rachel about her diabetes and her sister’s disease that she spiritually believed her sister had decided to have before birth.
With this experience as her first massage, Rachel drove us back into Virginia where we took route 50, a more scenic, less expensive highway that took us directly to Fairfax. We passed through the same beautiful Virginia countryside, this time along a 2-lane winding country road. We passed through Upperville, a small town with beautiful old southern brick houses, and then through Middleburg, and were ready to drive through Lowerton, but there wasn’t one. It was good to be back in the country I know so much better… Northern Virginia, but our visit to that “foreign” place was worth every mile of the trip.
Drea