"Cherry Plum. To Prevent Losing Control."

At 3:00 pm this afternoon, I have an appointment with a chiropractor. I had a vehicular mishap earlier this week and consequently, my body, little by little, is unleashing all sorts of neat ticks, twitches, aches and pains. This particular chiropractor came highly recommended by a couple of women at work who’ve been seeing him for quite some time. I’m a little worried that this may be the beginning of a long, rocky relationship. I’m worried that I won’t know how to break up with him once I get what I want. I’m worried that it might get a little weird.

He’s not my first one, though. I went to see a female chiropractor that worked out of her home in the Diamond district of Oakland a few years ago. The circumstances under which I came to need her services were not as dramatic as a car accident. I think I just bent down funny one day and couldn’t straighten up. Ah! Don’t you love getting older? One side of her house she had converted to her office and exam room and the other was her living space. You’d walk through the side entrance and enter a little reception area, complete with a small counter, chairs and copies of Sunset and Highlight magazines. She had a small water feature on the counter. This one had a little bearded Asian man with a fishing pole.

The walls were texturized a butterscotch-yellow to convey a warm and homey feeling. So very HGTV! Is that Yanni playing over the speakers? “Yanni” has come to mean “New Age music” like “Oreo” means chocolate wafer cookie with white cream filling. The room smelled of lavender. She was a middle-aged, blondish woman, soft around the edges. She reminded me a bit of Linda McCartney, if Linda had eaten refined carbohydrates. She was a little hippy-dippy, if you had’t already guessed.

She had me fill out a new patient form that had the usual medical history questions. Do you smoke? Do you drink? Allergies? Previous medical conditions? I quickly ticked off boxes and filled in the blanks. No. No. Hay fever. None. The next few questions were harder to answer. Vaginal or cesarean birth? Were forceps involved in pulling you out? Were you delivered at a medical facility or home birthed? I write in “Can’t remember, need to ask mother.” But, I seriously doubt my mother would remember either.

The exam lasted a little more than an hour. She told me to envision a bright fuchsia dot, floating over my neck and think of the word “family”. “Concentrate on feeling of the word, without judgement.” Okay. She gave me a pair of tricked-out Mary Janes, black shoes that had the front half cut off so all you really wore were the heel portion of the shoes. I put them on, laid face down and she proceeded to do some tap, tap, tapping on the heels while she pressed certain points on my back. Was I feeling better? I couldn’t tell yet. After telling me to think of a few more floating colors and to feel a few more words, I sat up, wondering where all this would lead. She had a cabinet which housed a collection of oversized, colored plastic glasses from which she picked out a pair of violet ones for me to wear. I felt very Elton John-ish. She told me to put them on while she excused herself for a moment. She returned holding a Dixie cup of water and a book on flower essences. “Drink this,” she said. “Cherry Plum. To prevent losing control.”

We continued to see each other for several months. I wanted to believe her treatments were helping but I think I just really liked laying down for an hour each week, thinking of colors and smelling lavender. It was't hurting, in any case. I eventually stopped going when I realized I could be putting that $50 per session on something else, like new running shoes or a gym membership. When I looked at it that way, breaking up with her didn’t seem weird at all.