January 17, 2008
Thursday

[The mustard  plaster is] one of the most frequently useful of all domestic remedies. When anybody is suffering pain, or, indeed, illness of any kind if you do not know what to do, put on a mustard-plaster, near the seat of the trouble. Should you not find where that is, put the mustard-plaster on the middle of the back. If properly attended to, it can do no harm; and in ninety-nine cases in a hundred it will do some good; sometimes a great deal of good.
                                 — Janet McKenzie Hill, 1852-1933
American authority on homemaking
from Household Companion: The Family Doctor,  1909

I am in most of my close relationships some combination of mother, lover, and best friend. I am your mentor, your cheerleader, the keeper of your history, the believer in your goodness. When you come to visit me I’ll feed you soup and bread that I made just for you, I’ll remember your birthday, and I’ll weep with you if you lose a parent or a spouse or a child. I am the person Marlene Dietrich said really mattered, the person you can call at four a.m.

Except this morning would not have been a good morning to do that. This morning at four a.m., this Day Six of the Cold That Won’t Die, I couldn’t take a full breath and I coughed so hard I think I cracked a rib. The euphoria that attended my first Benadryl dose didn’t come along with the second, and by late afternoon not only could I not do the things I wanted to do, I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to do them. I was tired of sleeping without rest, eating without enjoyment, reading without comprehension. I wanted someone to take care of me, to feel my forehead, hug me ’round the shoulders, and say, “Poor little thing.”

I wanted my grandmother.

Margaret Waters Dwyer, whom we called Mammam, was born in 1878 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. She left school  after ninth grade (not unusual in the 1890s), married at twenty-three, and raised three children. When she was widowed at sixty-two she moved to Harrisburg to live with my mother, then thirty years old and working as a stenographer for the federal government. When my parents got married six years later, my father moved in with them. Thus Mammam was a presence in my life from the time I was born until she died when I was eleven.

When I studied the nineteenth century for my American Studies master’s degree, I came to realize just how rooted in that century my grandmother was. Reading the homemaking manuals of the day, such as Lydia Child’s The Frugal Housewife (first published fifty years before my grandmother was born), I heard Mammam’s voice and recalled her household wisdom.

Mammam was a master of the home remedy, having brought her family through the common illnesses in the days when doctoring was done only for the mortally ill. When my sister and I were sick it was Mammam who cared for us. We’d sleep with her in her high double bed with the painting of a spray of roses on the headboard and the footboard I’d straddle and pretend was my horse, the sash from my robe wound around the cannonball post for the reins.

The cure for a cold was a vaporizer and a mustard plaster. The vaporizer was a glass and metal device such as the one seen at left that looked as if it would be more useful in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab than in a 1950s suburban bedroom. The boiling water gurgled and popped and I once overheard my mother and grandmother discussing what would happen if the thing went dry. It was already spitting Vicks-scented water droplets into the air, covering the bedclothes with a fine mist. I pictured an explosion that would splatter the walls and the bed, and me, with bits of green glass, and I took to pulling the covers over my head to protect myself.

The mustard plaster was another aromatic concoction designed to draw the sickness out. I never saw one being made, only remember lying on the bed in my undershirt and seeing a white tea towel wrung in hot water and yellow from the mustard paste spread on it being lowered onto my chest. I had to lie still and not let any of the paste touch my skin. After fifteen minutes or so I turned over and a different mustard plaster would be applied to my back. After that Mammam would rub Vicks ointment into my chest and back, bundle me into a flannel nightgown,  and turn out the light. I have a feeling that most of the medicine was in my grandmother’s hands as she spread the Vicks and in sleeping next to her (and my pretend horse) instead of in the double bed I shared with my sister.

It is odors that transport me, take me back, help me remember good things — cardamom, baby powder, English Leather after shave that smells like the boys I knew in high school. I keep a jar of Noxema under the sink in my bathroom because it reminds me of Mammam. When I couldn’t stand being sick one more second this afternoon I got it out. Drawing a deep breath only made me cough and I was so congested that the odor was faint. But I caught enough of it, eucalyptus oil, and within ten minutes I was in the car and over to the Rite-Aid for a jar of Vicks Vaporub, made of the same stuff.

Googling “mustard plaster” gave me lots of recipe choices (and stern warnings about not letting the paste touch your skin). I used equal parts flour and dry mustard, some corn oil, and enough warm water to make a thick paste. It was more white than yellow (I had imagined the recipe would call for French’s prepared mustard, like for a hot dog) and didn’t have much of an odor at all, except of the oil. I spread it on a dish towel wrung out in hot water, lay down on my bed, and applied it as Mammam would have. I skipped the application to the back because I would have had to go downstairs, make more paste, and rewarm the towel. I took a long hot shower, slathered myself with the Vicks Vaporub, put on my favorite sweatshirt and flannel pants, and sat down to watch ER.

I actually am feeling a lot better. My chest isn’t rattling, my nose isn’t running, and I’ve been able to concentrate long enough to write most of this piece.  Maybe it was the mustard plaster and the Vicks Vaporub, or maybe it’s just that the cold, headed into Day Seven, is at the end of its power. I have a feeling, though, that most of the medicine has been in this remembering.

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