Old Wives Tales--Home Remedies

Up most of the night with the sick dog....which led to more coughing. Was I really coughing more; or did I just notice it more because I was awake? Don't know. Maybe I have been coughing in my sleep, you would think that would wake me. I am a very light sleeper and was very aware of Oscar all night. If one of the other dogs got too close he would whimper, so I sort of held him all night and built a barricade around him with pillows. This meant that I had little room for me....... This left my mind to roam.... First I rearranged the cabinets in my kitchen and when that was to my liking I went on to imagine some walls out of my way. Love of my life will not be happy to hear this. Some where in the wee hours of the morning I was remembering some of my grandmother's old remedies. I had the croup a lot when I was young. All the adults in my life were smokers and the effects of second hand smoke weren't yet something that anyone would consider. Many nights would find me struggling to breathe---croup is a scary thing as you think you can't breathe. My earliest memories are my grandmother scooping me into her arms and heading outside to put my bare feet onto the frosty ground. I don't know why, but this brought immediate relief. Maybe the shock of the cold feet and the moisture in the air. This would be followed with some vile tasting cough syrup and a hot water bottle tucked next to my feet and an old rag doused with turpentine tied to the bed post. Seriously, this was her remedy, and this isn't the most bizarre one by far. Earaches were "cured" with a dose of urine in the ear. I never got to experience that one, probably because I didn't have brothers. The urine had to be warm and I guess it was probably best straight from the bladder. When I was about four I was playing with a puppy and he scratched my eye. I am sure I probably had a pretty bad corneal abrasion. I remember that it felt like my eye was on fire; but no trip to a doctor for me. I can still remember watching my grandmother get out the iron and ironing board to scorch a piece of old sheet that she tore into long strips. After that (I suppose that was to 'sterilize' the rags) she then grated a potato onto some other strips creating a poultice. She applied this to my eye and tied the whole thing to my head. It did provide relief, I am guessing the starchy fluid from the potato was soothing and my eye was covered, so no light could get to it. I am just now wondering where my mother was in all this. She always seemed to defer to her mother in an emergency. Funny thing was that she would always tell my sister and I stories of her childhood that involved neglect of her by my grandmother. Relationships are funny things. My mother and her mother were estranged when my grandmother died. It was an ugly affair involving the courts and she was quick to tell anyone who would listen that she only attended the funeral to make sure that my grandmother was indeed dead. This was doubly sad to me because my mother and I spent most of my adult life not seeing or speaking to one another for various reasons and when she died we were on the outs. I went to her in death, not to make sure she was dead, but to make some sort of amends and to say goodbye. The only way I could sum it up was to tell my dad that she was so hard to love. She would always belittle herself and want constant reinforcement of one's loyalty to her. This loyalty involved shunning whoever she was on the outs with at any particular time. Such a sad way to live your life, with the emphasis always on the negative. I couldn't do it and as a result she died pretty much alone. She had alienated most everyone but my dad. So sad. Gee, I am really sleep deprived to get to this! Time to take Oscar to the vet.............