A cure for the common cold
It is official, cold season has begun in my house. I should have known with the first sniffle, but I shrugged it off. Now, it is spreading like wildfire. Whines are coupled with tiny hacking coughs. I keep cold medication at hand, but almost always fail to dole it out because I fear the threat of overmedicating or misdiagnose. However, as a parent I want to provide my kids with a little comfort from their symptoms. Join me as I revert back to the anecdotes of my childhood in hopes of scaring away the common catarro.
As a child when I would get a cold, my ailing grandfather would undertake an almost ritualistic approach to making me feel better. Gathering up items that in his life he had used to remedy ailments of his own. Often enough, after his curandero ways, I would return to my many misadventures within two or three days. As if someone had just lifted off the cover off of a caged bird.
Now, I reminisce on these days seeking out my grandfather's shamanistic wisdom in hopes of alleviating my little one's discomforts. It seems my grandfather knew of aromatherapy before it was a popular tag phrase used to flag off chic stores with track lighting and scents like frangipani surprise. He would resort to a mish-mash of the old and the new.
One of the first things he would be to put me on his bed and walk over to his dresser, opening the drawer in which he kept his hane's white t-shirts. He would pull two out, and as I sat on his bed, he would pull both of them over my "skin and bones" frame. Like many other families in the U.S. he would pull out the trusty vick's vapo-rub. Slathering it on to my back, as he threatened to cook up some chicken foot soup. He would then take up his doctored up bottle of alcoholado Superior 70, bay oil based rum alcohol that he would add other curatives to like eucalyptus, orange blossom water, agua Florida, and what he called " Yerba Buena". He would then gather up the top t-shirt, pulling up to my forehead as a make shift turban pouring the liquid contents of the bottle over my head. He would pat my matted hair down, ensuring saturation, and then knot the t-shirt tightly at the crown of my head. I was then wrapped in his knitted blue and white blanket, ensuring that no drafts reached me. He was of the school of thought that colds were caused either by a chill or by a draft. So fans, air-conditioners, and running around in my usual shorts and tank tops was outlawed.
He would then rummage around the kitchen with his good hand; I could hear him cussing at the way my grandmother would leave the kitchen. I could always tell when he found his favorite cast iron pot by the loud clang it would make when he would drop it onto the stove. He would always put on two pots, one to cook in and one to "hervir". By that he meant that he would boil out his trusty Yerba Buena, indigenous spearmint found on our tiny island, in the larger of the pots, creating this dense steam throughout our house. This coupled with the already humid climate of Puerto Rico was almost suffocating. But, if you had a stuffed nose, it was sure to open up your sinuses. With a few clicks of the pilot, he would begin cooking up an " asopao" that would put haute cuisine to shame with it's unpretentious nature, but complex flavors. The loud banging and the shuffling of his house slippers would create almost a symphony and ever so often he would find himself in a state of mind to let his velvety voice bellow out a few rifts. Looking back, I wonder if it was the ingredients to his special asopao, the heat from the spearmint steam, or the smelly turban made from the finest stained t-shirt in the world. Maybe it was none of the above; maybe it was the skillful care and velvety voice of a man who set aside his own discomforts to heal mine.
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