Happy Father's Day

My father, although he supports my decision to be a massage therapist, has very mixed emotions about getting a massage from his daughter.  Papa Joe is 68 years old and in his lifetime he has allowed me to massage him 3 times.  Yes, I said THREE TIMES.  The first massage was after he crawled under the floorboards of one of his rental homes and "fixed" the plumbing.  The next time was after he had been in the hospital for several days and he was too weak to protest when I started rubbing his back.  The third time is my favorite massage story with Dad.

My father had been having neck and back pain for several weeks and the family had repeatedly tried to convince him to let me do a  massage, but the stubborn old mule (I say this with great affection) was resisting.  Every time we spoke on the phone Dad would casually mention that his back and shoulders were "bothering" him.  I would always tell him that I knew a good massage therapist who would probably give him a break on her fees and he would always say that he didn't want to put me out because he knew how busy I was.   This banter went back and forth for a couple of weeks until the day I decided I was going to show up on his doorstep and either by his agreement or by my forcing him, he was going to get a massage.

That afternoon my dad decided to let me work on him since I had went to all that trouble....driving 10 minutes down the road and carrying that heavy 8 oz bottle of massage oil into his house.  He protested a few times and accused me of putting him in a wrestler's hold, but for the most part it was just business as usual.  He thanked me for his massage and I went home feeling like I had helped him.

Two days after the massage I received a voice-mail from my father.  It went something along this line:

"Hellooooo (think Julia Child meets Minnie Pearl), it's your old Dad here.  I just wanted to call and tell you that my neck and shoulders feel so... much... better!  I haven't been doing anything different so it must be your massage that fixed me........Don't let that go to your head."

Dad and Nick