I love to lie on a hard, wood floor. When I am alone, in my little wooden-floored room on the top floor of the house, there is a gleaming wood floor that is often warm from sunlight that comes through skylights in the room. I sneak up there when I am tense, anxious, cold, in need of comfort. Then I revel in my floor. I lower myself down onto it with the care of a no-longer-young person. And carefully, carefully, I lie on my back, my stomach, my sides. The important thing is to feel as much of the ground with my limbs as I can and to press into it.
If I’m on my back that means tilting my pelvis so my lower back can feel the floor too and tilting my chin forward so I can feel the cool hardness against the back of my neck. I raise my knees up to my hips and rotate them from side to side so I can feel a massaging in the sacrum part of my lower back. To baptize my feet, I lower them to the floor and spread my toes out so each toe has contact with the floor. I do the same with my fingers, which splay out like webs on either side of me, each finger feeling the floor.
If I’m on my stomach I let all of my innards spill out and splay out onto the floor. I imagine them flowing out like a spot of water that moves unimpeded until its natural stop. I feel my breasts (no longer firm or tender as in youth) flatten against the wood. I stretch my arms out and rock a bit so that my armpits, too, can feel the floor. I turn my head so that one jaw and cheekbone, and then the other, can bless the ground. Then I let my forehead rest on it, tilting gently so the floor can kiss the bridge of my nose. I raise myself onto my forearms so they, too, get some floor, along with the soft front of my neck.
If I’m on my side, or quasi-side, at least one knee bends so the floor’s solidness can travel down my legs from my hips. I wish I could sleep this way in bed but sharing a bed with another person as I do this would take up too much space. On my floor all alone I can stretch as wide as I want and stay there for as long as I want. Sometimes my little dog comes and sniffs me but once she realizes there are no toys for me to throw and no treats, she loses interest and parks outside of the door of my room, guarding my private ritual from imaginary intruders.
Why do I love the floor so much? Once again, I think it has to do with dance. All of the things I love, ultimately, all go back to dance in some way, in part because I cannot imagine who I would be without it. Dance taught me to associate the floor with finding the strength and solidity for balance and resistance for pushing against for jumps. After class, I often collapsed into the comfort of the floor to breathe and to stretch. In dance, I was often trying to leave the floor but that did not mean that the floor was not my friend. Instead, the floor’s being there was something I could be absolutely sure of. It always held me. It never disappeared, not even temporarily or to go to the bathroom. It stayed in place regardless of how I pushed off from it or moved away from it.
The floor is what parents should be in an ideal world. There as needed but not otherwise interfering.
Copyright © Aili Whalen 2025. All rights reserved.
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