Go Hug a Tree
Navigating the value of touch in a pandemic world. Public schools — and massage parlours — reopened in my neighbourhood
The take-out window of the fried chicken place is in high demand. A line of cars backs up around the side of the building. Out front, patches of fake grass meet the ragged edge of the sidewalk. Artificial emerald green fibres are littered with discarded napkins, and drink lids. In the lot to the west, the neon of the motel sign stands two-stories high. In the twilight, it will illuminate, a red ‘Vacancy’ buzzing through the night.
Across the four lanes of traffic, a tower is being constructed. A crane lowers the funnel-shaped bucket of a mortar mixer from the skeleton of the sixth floor. It hovers ominously over the streams of cars towards the waiting cement truck below. Are we all imagining the swift fall to the street? After weeks in the grip of a pandemic, modelling disaster has become a habit.
Apart from the pedestrians sporting medical masks, and the discarded latex gloves like dried jellyfish stuck to gutters, my East Vancouver neighbourhood appears just as fashionably dystopian as it did the first month of this blighted year.
A realtor would say this is an area in transition. But for years, rejuvenation has looked like the papered-over windows of abandoned commercial buildings; land assembly signs as big as movie screens; half-built townhouses left exposed through the winter; and trees wrapped — for their own protection — with orange net fencing.
Many of the businesses that survive around here deal in food and services. Several have pivoted successfully. We cross our fingers that our orders of kimchi jjigae will keep our favourite spot alive through the summer. The butcher is busy. The chocolate factory has been doing curb-side pickup. But a series of small businesses in one particular industry have been disrupted. This stretch of Kingsway is home to a notable variety of massage and massage-related services. Signs advertise therapeutic massage, Chinese massage, beauty massage, foot massage, acupuncture and massage or, in one case, free underground parking and discreet back entry. In the dark, the strip mall is ominous without the parlour’s scrolling LED text.
Touch has value. It is something people are willing to pay for.
I live on a street between a massage parlour and an elementary school. On sunny days in early March the school kids would play freeze tag. They would swarm the playground equipment, a leaping, racing hoard, fingertips stretching to the limits. I imagine King Midas, his hand extending to comfort his daughter just before his touch transforms her into a solid mass of gold.
Public schools in British Columbia reopened on June 1. The children are reminded not to pop each other’s bubbles — not to come too close. At kindergarten, my son boasted he had a whole table to himself, but it was boring with everyone playing alone at recess. Toys and food and pens are not to be shared. I read an email from the children’s swim lessons. They are starting up again with the instructors wearing face shields in the water.
I chat in the park with a friend. We laid our blankets apart, and I try to picture a campfire or a decadent feast between us. She tells me how she’s noticed her daughter has stopped acknowledging strangers on their walks. Her toddler had a habit of charming people on the path, veering towards couples and grandma-types with her little grin, and basking in their reciprocal joy. Then people started backing away, trying to maintain a safe distance. So quickly, she’s learned not to engage. What does it mean? This is all temporary, we assure one another, our voices projecting across the void.
In the X-Men comics, Rogue wears gloves. Without them, her touch — skin-to-skin — sucks the strength of the other person. She gains their memories and their energy. Her first kiss puts her lover in a coma, like a backwards Sleeping Beauty. This is her super power. It is her curse.
It was six weeks into lockdown when my children took to hugging trees.
It was the day after I clotheslined the younger one when he tried to rush his grandparents. It was raining, so they were visiting from the edge of the covered landing. We were hovering inside the house, back from our doorway to keep our distance when the little one made a break for them. He is an aggressive hugger. His approach is that of a bounding wolverine — smaller than his target, but hungry. Impulsively, I caught him in the chest with my foot, like the giant cane from the Muppet Show. He cried, surprised and affronted as I held him to my chest. We all felt like crying.
On our next walk, my son made his point with the trees. Each one would be captured in his zealous embrace. We managed to agree that lampposts and telephone poles are not in need of hugs, but trees are okay as long as they are not too mossy or covered in ants. For a while, he hugged them all, looking out at me defiantly as I waited. Walking six blocks to the mailbox could take all morning.
It is while my youngest is dashing towards a particularly mossy trunk, that I notice the massage parlour at the end of the street has put out its sandwich board. After months of darkness, the strings of Christmas lights smashed up against the closed horizontal blinds twinkle in the window. I swerve to the edge of the sidewalk as a small masked woman passes by. My son is attached to the base of the tree like a starfish. He rubs his cheek into a strangely fuzzy black patch of bark. I cringe.
Finally, his victim is released and we are free to carry on. I brush moss from his jacket and imagine masseuses in face shields.
As we get to the crosswalk, I take my son’s hand. For a moment, it is a calming heat, a pulsing stone as smooth as a petal. Then he squirms and jerks to free himself from my grasp. He prefers trees now.
Erin Ashenhurst writes on urban living, motherhood, and other common oddities. Read more about her lockdown days in The Tyee.
