Life's Tapestry with Selene Jones » Essay

Magical Healing

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:01:23 +0000

The earliest memory I have of my mother comes back to me in the uncapping of a jar of Vicks Vapor Rub. Opening the jar and releasing that strong mentholated greasy aroma into the room and offering it up to my olfactory senses is for me like letting a ‘genie out of a bottle’ with its strong magical healing presence. My husband is a wholehearted believer in its powers too; we were both raised on its promises, so in the thirty some years we have been married it has become a staple in our home, as important as bread and milk. Unlike bread and milk, one small midnight-blue jar lasts so long I am convinced it will be one of the last belongings our son will pull from our bathroom cabinet after our deaths. I can see him standing there holding it considering whether to keep it or toss it, wondering if it is still effective in its ability to ease his breathing and allow him to get a good nights rest. If he decides to keep it, it should last him a lifetime as well, my husband and I both inherited the partial jars our mothers left in their bathroom cabinets, easily a lifetime supply for several generations.

But it’s my first memory that is awakened the moment its aroma and its magical healing power escape from the small midnight-blue jar. My dad had been sent overseas for a year when I was two years old and sometime during that year I became sick with Red Measles. There weren’t vaccines for measles when I was a child, so my mother was well prepared to manage this common childhood illness. She had been through it many times with my older siblings. But as was my mother’s luck during the long periods of my father’s absence, the measles weren’t running their course and instead of getting better I was getting worse. I had developed one of the serious complications of measles; I had come down with pneumonia too. I remember the doctor coming out to our house to see me and standing there telling my mother how to make me more comfortable as my fever and my coughing had both become incessant. While he was there my mother went about filling the stainless steel humidifier with water and taking a spoonful of Vicks Vapor Rub as he directed and dropping it into some little container on the top of it. Very soon the room was spewing that glorious warm vapor now saturated with the strong aroma of that magical mentholated rub. My incessant coughing began subsiding and finally I could rest. And just as important, Mama could rest now too. I could feel her worry and anxiety becoming lighter as she carried me to Daddy’s recliner.

We had this old overstuffed rocker recliner, I remember the joy of being in it while older siblings whose feet could touch the floor would rock it back and forth, back and forth, and then spin it until my eyes would roll and my head would become wobbly. It was my favorite inside activity, it was huge and two or three of us could sit in it at a time while the others spun it in circles on its metal underpinning. Our giggles and squeals of sheer delight would often drown out the sound of the giant RCA black and white TV that sat in the corner of the room on its four legs vying for our attention. But we were the kind of kids that preferred the interactive energy of the chair to the passive energy the TV emitted. The TV was still a fairly new arrival in our world and hadn’t yet found the power to quietly sit us down or keep us inside on a pretty day. Its day would come but it had not come yet to our house full of growing children. The chair was definitely ‘dibs’ material when Daddy wasn’t home and was seldom free of our bouncing little bottoms. Mama got to sit in it whenever she wanted when Daddy was away and although she may have held me and rocked me in its overstuffed frame since birth, it is this memory of being held by my mother on the throne in our kingdom that has stayed with me.

I remember feeling so bad and so weak and so cold when Mama lowered us onto its soft well-worn upholstery. I was sitting facing her, my legs wrapped around her waist and my feet neatly tucked between the seat cushion and the back of the chair. I remember how warm my feet became tucked into this small space behind the small of my mother’s back. My arms hanging motionless exhausted at my sides, and my hair being sticky and plastered to the side of my face from fever, I could feel the little ringlets tickling me as they were drying and springing from my cheeks. But mostly, I remember my mother’s voice, soothing me, as I drifted somewhere in between my feverish dreams and her lap well worn from already thirteen years of mothering.

And I remember the smell of Vicks Vapor Rub, set free through the bursts of steamy air that filled the space in us and between us, the scent with its strong healing presence permeating the space, the chair, and my exhausted mother holding me, holding us. The healing power returns as I uncap that small midnight-blue jar and that mentholated aroma embraces me as it did over fifty years ago in the arms of my mother and magically I am feeling better.

Unfolding

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:36:03 +0000

Standing in this early morning light watching as it softly calls to the colors in my world: wake-up, wake-up, you sea-foam greens, you sandy shores, you burnt offerings, seeing it as it rhythmically dances with my walls, makes love to my furnishings- what pleasure I find in bearing witness to this day as it unfolds, proclaims its arrival in its seductive movements- its dim lights. I celebrate this ordinary ritual with a ritual of my own as I unload my clothes dryer full of towels some older than my thirty-five year marriage and begin folding, such a menial task, the mind-numbing tediousness of matching corners and folding, matching new corners and folding. The faded cotton remnants piled high on the countertop before me: threadbare, stained, and tattered their stories softly calling my name, remember me. And another quiet treasure offers itself to me for the taking and I latch on and follow as I grasp the threads on the top of the pile.

I am sitting on my bed in my parent’s house on my wedding day unwrapping the last minute gift of a friend, another set of 100% cotton towels, these a solid shade of earthly brown. They will go well with everything orange my absolute favorite color, and for me the color of my entire adolescence growing up in the sixties and seventies. The Sunkist Orange I painted my room at fourteen will now follow me into my marriage and into my new home. How many sets of towels do we have now? I am not sure but I know my mother is meticulously writing down each gift with its mandatory thank-you note awaiting my thoughtful penmanship. I am so young again in this moment, I can even feel the butterflies fluttering as I held this towel for the first time anticipating my walk down the aisle later that day. Now it so faded, I don’t know if I can even call it brown any longer but it is softer than it was when it was new and for the umpteenth time in my life I consider tossing it into the ragbag. But once again I remember wrapping it around my wet young body in anticipation of my glorious life yet to unfold and once again I decide to hang on to it a while longer, who knows it may still contain some of the magic I use to feel when I was wrapped loosely in its new threads.

I set aside the beginning of the pile and take the next towel from the heap; it is a solid white towel, my husband’s favorite, it is small and as thin as parchment. It couldn’t possibly dry him any longer but he won’t hear of it making its way into the ragbag. It can no longer make its way around his waist but he will call me when he is in the shower and ask can you get me a towel, that white one, he will say and although we have other white ones, thick, long, luxurious, Egyptian cotton towels, I know the one he wants is small and as thin as parchment. It is his towel, it is so interesting to me the things we attach ourselves to and hold tight long after their apparent usefulness is gone. But has it? Who is to say? Not me, as I match the thin corners together and continue riding the threads of my memories.

101 Dalmatians, my son is twenty-two years old now but this beach towel still weaves its way through my laundry cycles. The reds, blacks, and yellows are still bright and the cotton is still thick and absorbent but I have no idea who left this towel at our house. Obviously its owner was some little boy who came to swim in our pool and left it and never returned to reclaim it. It is never one I would have bought because never has there been a character as evil in my young son’s mind as Cruella Deville. He was terrified of her and after watching Glen Close in her riveting Disney portrayal of this dastardly character he was unable to sleep for weeks, for years he remained frightened of her name. But I keep it, to remind me of that little boy that once I could reassure Cruella Deville would never be able to get by me to get to him. I am no longer powerful to give such reassurances. But I match the red thick corners together and let my mind and my fingers linger in the folds of this memory.

I glance at the pile still heaped on the counter, the edge of the 1972 calendar dishtowel my mother owned that I inherited when she died peers from the depths. It is still intact in every way as are the memories of the year my husband and I began dating. I see the date, November 1^st a Wednesday and remember clearly. The seventeen year old boy, a Senior, waltzed into my geometry class just as I had found my desk before the bell had rung and kneeled down beside me flashing that incredible smile and those brown eyes asking me for my phone number. I was so impressed by his bravery; I was not the kind of girl boys easily approached and never with a room full of classmates to bear witness to their effort. Then as the bell rung he stood to leave and leaned forward and kissed me on my cheek and said I will be calling you. The blush that arose on my cheeks was crimson. I had not given him my number but he was so self-assured as he glanced over his shoulder at me as my teacher Mr. Hecht escorted him to the door. I knew he would call and that night he did call me. High school sweethearts then, now an old married couple encompassed and intertwined by threads of every weave and color imaginable bearing witness to our lives.

I am struck by the haphazardness and the order simultaneously coexisting in this hodgepodge of memories. There are the pristine guest towels, the dye stained hair color towels, the painting towels, the dusting towels, the drying towels, the towels of every color scheme my bathrooms have been in the last thirty-five years. There are designer towels and Walmart towels, there are his mother’s towels and my mother’s towels, and there are stranger’s towels. And somehow together they are our towels; in their separateness is their sameness. It is the unfolding of my life, and I am struck in this moment by the awesome order in the chaos of this pile of towels. And although the light of this new day is no longer dancing on my walls and awakening my colors it unfolds invisibly and I am aware of its beauty and I am thankful to be here in this moment matching corners and folding, matching new corners and folding, in this, the menial tedious task of living, the unfolding of my life.