Life, actually…
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HEALING HANDS AND ASPERGUM DREAMS
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In today’s true tale, Jimmy Three is ten years old, some seven decades ago.
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As Village Elderdom wends its way down the years, it becomes easier to time-travel to the way-back country of youth—youth and its barely-containable energy.
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This morning Jimmy Three is gazing into the metal mirrored medicine cabinet of his childhood bathroom. He searches for the Aspergum container. Brother Ronny has a fever and Aspergum is decreed the curative of choice.
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Jimmy Three is fascinated by, fearful of, mysterious shelved unguents and salves and multi-shaped pills and spoonable fluids, cardboad boxes housing bandages, tapes and cushiony pads. Cellophane wrappings and flexible-tubed pastes hide behind mild-mannered mercurochrome and ouchy merthiolate.
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He dares not touch the castor oil bottle because it retains memories of squinched-face gulps during sickbed episodes. He is fascinated by Alka-Seltzer wafers because dissolved they taste like embittered soft drinks. Why can’t I drink them even when I’m not ill, he wonders.
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Tooth powders and toothpastes rest side by side. Denatured alcohol awaits emergency chigger bites, Vicks VapoRub is there in case stuffed-nosed colds lurk. Vasoline soothes and slides. Menthol cough drops heal sore throats—and they make guilty-pleasure candy, too.
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Jimmy Three is amazed by Mother’s knowledge of what to do with each of these dozens of medicinal wonders. She tells tales of her own mother’s country-bred wisdom about which plant, which herb, which tree bark, which paregoric, which asafidity cure is best for each malady, each emergency.
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Now, living in a small village separated from much of nature, Jimmy Three’s family relies on over-the-counter and mail-order solutions to daily medical urgencies once scooped from yards and hillsides.
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Aspergum is today’s drug of choice. Even if brother Ronny’s fever runs its course naturally, Aspergum at least distracts him from the demi-reality of fever dreams and giant calming hands descending to his forehead. Those hands pretend to be testing his temperature, but their real purpose is to assure him that comfort and care and love are always nearby, in this tiny bungalow in this long-ago village.
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This long-ago village that will persist in time till final memory fades, making way for the next family, clearing room for another generation to find its own special paths to love and healing
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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.
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