Saved by the Bush

My mom is my hero.
I can understand why you'd be slightly confused by that statement since I may or may not have written ten blog posts which may not have painted her in the best light. A few of them may or may not have been slightly homicidal in tone, but this is not about pointing fingers or placing blame, it is about giving credit where credit is due and taking a moment to salute the unsung heroes in everyday life like Kern Jeremiah does in his blog 'People who help others'.

There are some problems like homelessness and pollution that leave us scratching our heads and asking someone who knows more than we do to give us a hand. In some cases, if we are very lucky, they offer -in very Mama-like fashion - unsolicited advice that turn out to be just what we needed all along,

My mother is very fond of saying that "common sense was made before book" and "medicine was there before doctors".  If you take a minute, you will realise that she is right. Books are made up of information gathered by people who lived and learned and passed on their experiences and medicine was all around us before we started paying an arm and a leg for someone to drug us into good health.
Jinnel Anderson's blog 'Kitchen Medications' takes an in-depth look at the medicinal benefits of simple herbs, spices and foods that we eat everyday.

Pregnant or nursing mothers eat differently than everyone else. Foods like pineapple, nuts and corn which are just delicious the rest of the time becomes no-no's when pregnant. However, ochro a.k.a. okra is a food that Mama strongly recommended when my due date started to draw near. According to my mother, this slimy food should be eaten by expectant moms because the slime makes the birthing process easier. I don't know if it actually works but anything that would make pushing a watermelon-sized bundle out of a mango-sized opening less painful can't be all bad, right?

Mama swore by Vervine for lactating moms as it increases milk production. When my baby was born, I was all gung ho to do the whole breastfeeding thing. My mother would picked and boil a handful of the shaggy, green leaves, I would drink an unsweetened teacupful every evening and come morning I was ready for milking. It has the added benefit of being a blood cleanser or a 'cooling' as we know it.

Caraille is so bitter that not everyone can cook it and not everyone can eat it. I remember as a child sucking on the red, sweet seeds of the ripe fruit but I think I was fully grown the first time I ate and enjoyed fried, green caraille. It is great for people with diabetes as the Bitter Gourd, as it is also called, helps control blood sugar. For my baby though, Mama suggested not the fruit, but the leaves.
My daughter used to get these heat rashes and the remedy was a bath using water with caraille leaves to keep her cool. Carille is also a cooling and can be drank for the cold but definitely not by me...yuck!

There is (slightly) better tasting stuff that can be drank for a cold. My mother's favourite is Baccano. The dried leaf, when boiled and drunk, will get that phlegm off your chest within days. Christmas, Shining and Cerio Bush are some other cold remedies that are free to use if you can get your hands on them.

There is a lot more that can be added to my mom's eat-this, drink-that list but this isn't just about that.
It is about thanking the hero in my life who unselfishly gave advice and assistance and is a major reason that I can say to you all, without feigned humility, that I am an awesome mother. Mama's invasion, I mean inclusion, in my daughter's life and during my pregnancy played a pivotal role in my winning the Mom award.
And yes, self-appointed trophy still counts.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

My mother loves bathing in the rain. 
I remember, while growing up, whenever the rain started to pour down in that pull-the-covers-over-your-head, not-moving-from-this-comfy-spot sort of way, she would change into tights and a tee and go walking through the rain.

 Sometimes she would use the time to pull weeds but other times, she would just bask in God's happy tears. She so loved wet days that it always struck me as amazing that her all-time favourite advice for anything that ails you would be to 'take some sun'. 

Now, don't get me wrong; hot days are perfect if you are the ice-cream licking, river/beach/pool going type; and sunlight, in my opinion, beats the hell out of the doom and gloom of a dark and dreary, overcast and ominous day, but Mama took that wholehearted belief in the rejuvenating powers of solar energy to a whole other level.

When my baby was about a weeks old, my mother 'put it to me' that the child needed some sun. She then advised (cough! ordered) me to leave my bed around six-ish  - when the sleep is its sweetest - and swaddle my newborn and take her for a walk in the early morning rays. And, not just once or even once in a while, no...every single morning as long as the rain was not falling. This went on until my baby was about three or four months old. (I think it was her underhanded way of getting me to exercise away the baby weight.) 

When I was young, if we had the flu, she would insist that we leave the loving and revitalizing arms of our beds, where we were comfortably feeling like death, and 'take some sun'. Sometimes she would see something in the rich darkness of our complexion, comment that we looked "peaky" or pale and suggest (and not take no for an answer) that we 'take some sun'. Heaven forbid that we voiced a complaint about not feeling well, be it a headache or hangnail, the remedy was always the same: 'take some sun'.

One of her favourite mandates has always been not to let the sunrise greet us still in bed. Well I think, since they are so buddy-buddy, she should ask it to rise at a decent hour, like 10 o'clock....and while she's at it, she could ask her BFF to chill a bit, 15 million degrees is just showing off.

Hands off

Never underestimate the power of body language.

By now, we should all be aware of the connotations related to certain physical expressions.

In different cultures, common motions, such as handshakes or high fives, are considered

 either disrespectful or downright obscene.  It just isn't done!

And according to my mother, the same could be said of the actions of babies and children.

Toddlers are often seen looking backwards through their own legs and sometimes through their mothers' Just a part of growing up, right? According to Mama, it is not innocent fun and games. Assuming that position means they are looking for the next baby.

Oh yes, the placement of one's hands can mean different things. I remember reprimands for assuming 'The Thinker' pose, with one's chin on one's hand, apparently when we do it, it does not convey the same deep, philosophical introspection as the statue, instead, we were "propping sorrow". In other words, holding up our heads as though the worry was too much to bear.

Heaven forbid, you put your hand on your head because that has a powerful meaning too. I remember the first time I heard Mama ask my baby if she was trying to kill me. Apparently that pose is a foreshadow of doom and killing your mother is not okay, no matter how frustrated she makes you feel.

You cannot fold your arms across your body, not even to stave off cold or company, because you would be tying up your life and you definitely cannot stand with your hands on your hips because it was the epitome of disrespect and not seemly for children to do so. Pointing fingers was definitely out as you know there are four more pointing back right at you.

There was quite a list of 'don't-do-that's for a growing body in my home. When I think about it, I am rather surprised that we did not spend all our formidable years standing at 'At-ten -shun!'

Your Number 1

Mothers are really concerned about bodily functions.  
Just think about it. They are forever asking you about the 'go'.

"Do you have to go?", "Did you go?" Or even, "How was the go?"
They want to make sure you are "regular" and they are always really concerned about the state of your underwear.

Parents usually went to great lengths to ensure their kids' bodies were on schedule.
Remember that bi-yearly purge?

If your parents were anything like mine, you were mandated to drink that God-awful senna concoction in January, right after the Christmas holiday, and just when you started to regain the use of your taste buds, you had your second dose, at the end of August break, in preparation for school in September.

To give mothers their due, there is a lot to be learnt from stool but this little lesson today is not about number 2, it's about number 1. 
Urine, piss, pee...a rose by any other name would be just as gross.

But according to my mom, a sprinkle of tinkle has some powerful uses.
It can be used to cure Thrush. Thrush is a white rash often found in baby's mouth and tongue. It can be painful and make swallowing difficult. But with the power of pee from the baby's diaper, (the cloth kind, not Huggies,) you can help get rid of the infection. Yes, it sounds disgusting, but according to my mother, rubbing the wet diaper onto the thrush rash will help.

Another painful ailment is Conjunctivitis, more commonly know to us as Red-eye or Pink-eye. 
In babies, it can cause vision problems so it is not something you want to play with.  Just like with thrush, wiping the baby's infected eye with the wet diaper is supposed to help with the painful redness and swelling as well as the build-up of mucus in the corner of the eye, symptomatic of Red-eye.

Don't be too grossed out by these, pee-pee had many household uses throughout history, including drinking.
Just be glad that there are caffeinated beverages and flavour additives available now so the disgusting things you put into your mouth today generally taste great.

Hiccup flick-up

Hiccups are generally harmless.  Everyone, who is anyone, has battled these bouts at one time or another, maybe before some food or after some drink. They are involuntary contractions of the diaphragm muscles. And really, they are usually nothing to worry about. 

Everyone has a remedy: drink a glass of water upside-down, suck on a lime, take a deep breath and hold it or, for the adventurous, have those hiccoughs scared out of you. I even heard that a warm bath was the best way to smooth away the hiccups. Personally, I just wait the buggers out, they usually come to an end all on their own.
(However, if they persist for more than three hours, it is advised that you visit your doctor.)

Some people even say that hiccups means one is gaining some weight and for a baby, a little weight gain is not a bad thing.
However, when your one week-old baby starts to hiccup so violently that her tiny six-pound body is racked by endless convulsions, then they don't seem nearly as benign as you always believed. In that case, you usually find yourself standing helplessly by and panicking about the permanent damage that is no doubt being inflicted on her fragile body (you can already visualise them), followed by the  almost-creepily intensive staring session while you wait for these terrifying tremors to stop.

Now, I am not saying that those other remedies won't do the trick, and if you aren't partial to the baby then, by all means, scares the hiccups away. But I had grown a tad attached to my daughter so, no could do.
Luckily, my mother knows what to do to stop them. You simply take a piece of thread, suck on it for a bit, then stick it onto the baby's forehead. Make sure the thread comes from the baby's clothing, apparently, it's the clincher.

Or, take an unlit matchstick or two and put them into the baby's hair, above the soft spot at the crown.
However, just between you and me, here's the quickest cure for baby's hiccups that I know: milk.
While breast may be best, bottles have worked for ages, so run with that if you have to. Simply stick a teat of some kind in the baby's mouth and before you know it, no more hiccups.

Yeah, baby, suck on that!

Mirror mirror

When my daughter began toddling, she developed this habit of standing in front of the mirror and kissing her reflection. She would go "goo-goo-gaa-gaa" over her eight-teeth smile and I would go "goo-goo-gaa- gaa" over her.
I thought it was just the cutest thing ever, until my mother put in her two-cents.

According to Mother Knower, a baby should not watch his reflection in a mirror because the father "will not 'mine' the child", meaning he would not take care of him financially. 

Listen up all you single mothers and all you deadbeat dads, despite the convoluted Sociological and Psychological explanations being tossed about, the real reason for your problems is that your baby played with a mirror!
Isn't it great to have all the answers?

If my mind was not blown enough, she added that children who spend a lot of time in front of the mirror have frequent nightmares. And that is because the spirits of the dead can be seen in the looking glass and children are sensitive enough to be disturbed by them.

My mother was never twisted enough to insist that we cover all mirrors in the house, though it has been said that when a loved one goes to that great, big playground in the sky, his family should cover all the mirrors in the house for the next three days so that the spirit does not get drawn into one and stay trapped on earth. I am not sure if we dodged that bullet because Mama did not believe it or because no one in our house died so we never had to put it to the test.

I am not telling you to believe in all of this hocus-pocus, but I can honestly tell you  something - and no judging! - for years, my daughter would awake crying from the bad dreams that she had had; and her father is as dead a beat as possible without becoming an actual beet or some other vegetable.

Coincidence?
Let me find out:
"Magic Mirror, on the wall...."

No black, Yes black

When my daughter was about eight years old, she went through an 'Emo' phase.
Was eight too young for a phase?  Maybe, I blame cartoons.
Anyway, she came home from school one day, bubbling over with excitement, because her class was going on an outing to the mall and, of course, she had 'nothing to wear' so there was a shopping trip in our future.

No matter what anyone tries to tell you, the power of cute packs quite a punch and somehow she ended up with an adorable black blouse and black jeans. Because the outing was at the mall (where those people seem to forget that Trinidad is a tropical island and should never be 17° C) she needed a jacket. Luckily, I happened to own a tapered black blazer with a long tail which fit my baby like a trench coat. Her hair was a jumble of twists and curls which were surprisingly easy to manipulate into something resembling a faux hawk.
 Can you picture it? 
Absolutely gorgeous!

At least I thought so until my mother saw my daughter on her return from the outing.

At no point did she say that black was not beautiful - because we all know it is - but she said everything else.

'Why in the insert-colourful-phrase -here did I dress my child in all black?'
'Was I crazy?' 
'Was I blind?' 
'Did I not know how inappropriate it was to put a child in black?'

I tried to counter:
She was completely clothed.
According to my mother, I was still wrong.
No navel showing. I was still wrong.
No off-the-shoulder, no halter, no cleavage-baring, deep v-neck.
I was still wrong.
No miniskirt, no figure-hugging sheath. (I had decided that she was not allowed to have a figure).
She was with her teachers, not on a date.
She was not wearing any makeup. (Although some black nail polish and eyeliner would have been the perfect compliment and tied the hold 'Emo' thing together)
Guess what? I was still in the wrong!

Just between you and me, to this day, I am still not completely sure what unforgivable hanging offense I had committed by dressing my child in a perfectly decent and beautiful suit of clothes but based on my mother's completely over-the-top and totally irrational reaction, it was a doozy!

But there was no way to win against my mother so, no to black.

One day, I think it was after a funeral or the death of a family member, my mother told me to make sure we turned our  underwear inside-out  before bed to keep out the wandering spirits.
That's not the strangest part.
She said we needed to wear black undies to bed. Yes, black!

After almost having my head bitten off, chewed, swallowed and regurgitated, why would buy my child any more black clothes?

I am not sure why I brought it back up but I opened my mouth and verbal vomit spewed forth.

'Are you not the person who forbid me, under the threat of grievous bodily harm, to dress my daughter in black?'

I don't know if her response knocked the smart or the stupid out of me but when she said, in her brook-no-argument tone of voice, that "This was different."
I said nothing...absolutely nothing.