“Welcome to my garden spa!” the big girl said to a little one, gesturing broadly at a lawn that seemed to become greener with each sunlit moment. It was one of those exquisite Washington days when blossom-laden trees waved gently in breezes that had turned warm overnight. Yesterday you needed boots; today it was flip-flop weather.
“Why don’t we start with the hot stone treatment,” the girl said, in warm managerial tones. She invited the smaller child to stretch out, prone, on the flagstone walkway that ran beside the lawn.
“Are you comfortable?”
“The rock is hot,” said the small girl, her voice muffled by her position.
“Well, that’s because it is a hot stone treatment.”
“Oh.”
The proprietor, who, being a child, had never set foot in an actual spa, created an atmosphere of remarkable Zenlike verisimilitude. As she moved about, she was careful not to jostle her client, and she kept her voice smooth and modulated.
“Now I’m going to use lavender to scent the water,” she said, breaking some leaves off a shrub and dropping them into a metal bowl.
She dipped a paper towel into the bowl. “Now I’m going to cool you off.” She applied the wet compress to the legs of her client, making the girl jump with surprise.
“How does that feel?”
“Cold. Can I get up and help in the spa now?”
“No, no, you’re my customer.”
In springtime, Alfred Lord Tennyson said, a young man’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of love. For young ladies, fancy seems to turn to thoughts of beautification. In a park the other day, I saw a dozen schoolgirls in plaid uniforms draping themselves prettily with chains of tiny yellow flowers. It was like a scene from Eden.
Women’s fashion magazines are attuned to the springtime beautification urge, but they tend to sell it as a season of anxiety. Swimsuit weather approaches! We must all start doing leg lifts and abdominal crunches after a winter’s worth of eating comfort foods!
Whether women really subscribe to this annual panic is an open question, but it is true that trade in pedicures and bikinis starts picking up about now, in advance of the full-on chlorination of late May. At the garden spa, meanwhile, the piped-in soundtrack of birdsong was joined by the distant cacophony of saws and hammering and other hopeful end-of-recession sounds. Fronds of bright yellow forsythia nodded in the light wind. A dogwood tree, still only in bud, looked like it was waiting for its neighbors to stop showing off before it broke into flower.
To this idyll, the spa owner was preparing to introduce a new level of service. Telling her customer to please calm herself and hold still, she raised a large green watering can.
“Now I’m going to water your legs,” she announced.
“No thank you!” the client yelped.
“But it’s part of the treatment.”
“OK, gross! Now an ant went on my arm!” the small girl cried, getting to her feet. Evidently she’d had enough natural beauty for one spring day.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
