Látra-Björg was an 18th C Icelandic poet who ran away from her life as a housewife in order to wander around the country on a sort of endless tea party. She brought gossip and left amusing poems, and was thus welcome wherever she went. Tempted to ditch it all and try the wand’ring minstrel lifestyle? Best bite your tongue. As Látra-Björg’s poems grew blunter and less flattering, the good people of rural Iceland started hiding behind the curtains and ignoring the doorbell.
At least, that’s what I gathered from this nifty art installation in her honour at the National Museum of Iceland, in the thirty seconds or so before the boys dragged me away in search of something less terminally boring.
If there is anything more delightful than traveling with kids, it’s traveling without them. I’d had fun exploring Reykjavík with the boys, but as soon as Richard was finished with his conference, I handed over the reins and ran for the hills. And when I say hills, I mean day spa. Like an endless tea party, but with saunas.
This was my first such treat in a looong while – in fact, ever -- so I organized it with military precision. First, I persuaded my old school-friend Karen to fly over from London. Then Icelandair came to the party with a special offer: a day at the Laugar Spa for only seven bucks. If you’ve been following along, you know that’s in the same complex as the swimming pool with the great slide, and a mere saunter from the famous Family Fun Park, so that would take care of the boys.
The physicists closed up shop at 12.30 and less than an hour later, we were all on the bus to our respective Valhallas. I found it surprisingly hard to wave the boys goodbye after my week in the driver’s seat; I swear there was a velcro-like ripping sound as Karen dragged me off the bus and in the direction of the spa. How would they manage without me? Clearly, it would take several hours of utter decadence to cure the vaguely downtrodden aspect that comes from wiping other people’s bums and cleaning up after their tiny wayward willies.
But look what greeted us at the entrance to the spa. It’s a… well, I guess you’d call it a tower of bums. A looming, phallic tower. Of bums. They glistened prettily in the misty rain, but you know what? It wasn’t my job to wipe them.
Inside the building, we waved our free passes and demanded the works. Unfortunately, it turned out you had to book in advance for any of the treatments. For today, we would have to be content with enjoying the communal spa rooms -- just as soon as we “entered the system.”
This was a Bladerunner-esque procedure involving an eye-recognition machine. You stare into a lens and wait for the beep, whereupon the machine utters a soothing phrase, in a calm female voice: Identification is completed. Entry to the changing room involves eyeballing another camera, and the same mechanical response.
Ah, now this is the life: sleek, chic décor; fluffy white robes and towels. We have to shower first, in the Icelandic fashion, and put on our swimsuits as it’s a unisex facility. Then it’s into a bleak corridor for another eye-to-eye with the identity robot. A door opens and we find ourselves in a steamy, dimly lit room. A citrus-scented waterfall tumbles from the ceiling into a shallow pool, illuminated by red and green lights. Stop or go? I venture in. It’s colder than expected. I’ve been showered with cool orange juice before, but only at the breakfast table. This luxury version is silly, and weirdly agreeable.
It’s just the first of several hot and cold delights. For the brave, there’s an icy plunge pool in a giant barrel that you reach by climbing up a ladder. There are steam rooms of varying temperatures and designs. The one that becomes our favourite is tiled in tiny squares of orange, red, and yellow, with contoured Barbapapa benches that conform exactly to the shape of my tired back, neck, and legs. Blue lights in the ceiling threaten to beam us up.
We oscillate between this womb-like space and a salty bubbling pool lit by pulsing underwater lights that constantly change colour. I’m sitting on a conveniently placed bench, enjoying the bubble jets and idly fondling the oddly shaped seat, when I register that it’s a cousin of the anatomical monument outside. Nothing like a bronzed underwater butt-crack to make you feel, uh, pampered. Then Karen points out the decorative bas-relief tiles on the walls, featuring what can only be described as giant, wiggly sperm. Wait. I thought I came here to get away from all that!
Motherhood is all about monkey-mind, yes, but also monkey-body. It takes me quite a while to stop fretting about how the boys are getting on in the Fun Park in the rain. But it takes even longer to just sit still. I realize I’m constantly on physical red alert, in case somebody needs something fixed, opened, picked up or handed over. Gradually I give myself over to the sensation of having my hands and mind to myself, and enjoy the unfamiliar rhythm of uninterrupted conversation.
Karen and I go back twenty-mumble years. She’s Patsy to my Edina, glamorous, brilliant and inexplicably single (the men of London have rocks in their heads). We gossip about life, work, gardening, the cities we’ve lived in, friends, family, gardening, schooldays, cats, and more gardening. It's so good to catch up with each other. Later that weekend, as we speed-chat and speed-drink in a swanky coffee-shop that turns into a bar at night, I realize in a moment of drunken wisdom that getting older doesn’t so much slow you down as hurry you up. So much to do and say; so little time.
The spa has a tiny restaurant where you can order macrobiotic food, but we just drink the iced water and flip through Icelandic gossip magazines. You can come and go as you please to the gym upstairs and the open-air main pool, where we look for the boys but don’t find them. We find our way to the ultimate chill-out room, or warm-up room, with leather loungers arranged in a concentric circle around a blazing woodstove, and ambient music to really flatten out the brainwaves, as we natter about life, work, and greenhouses.
I want to stay here forever, but we must rendezvous as promised with the menfolk in the cafeteria upstairs. So it’s back through the eye-recognition machine to the changing room for a brisk shower, the ritual borrowing of each other’s cosmetics, and some quick girly business with the hairdryer and the straightening iron. I feel pretty, and incredibly tranquil, and about fourteen.
Upstairs, though, we’re greeted by two tired boys and a frazzled spouse, all of them at the end of their ropes. Briefly, I want to flee -- surely someone, somewhere, would enjoy my company in exchange for some witty poems? Instead, I do my best to cling to the sense of calm and well-being the way the citrus scent clings to my hair, as I sink like a soufflé back into my busy life. Identification is completed.