Mrs. Fix It's home remedies

And then, awake enough to think more clearly, I got up and went after the reliable remedy. It wasn’t in the medicine cabinet, though. It was in the kitchen. I got a box of salt (I like kosher salt or sea salt for these purposes; Morton’s is half sugar) along with a tall glass and an ice-tea spoon, dissolved a good slug of the salt in some nice hot water, and gargled the results for several minutes. And when I woke up in the morning, my sore throat was gone.

I love it that so many of life’s little maladies can be treated in this way: simply, quickly, cheaply, using stuff you already have on hand. Everyone has their own repertoire of home remedies, but there are some we all share. Who hasn’t heard of beefsteak for a black eye, for instance, or ice for a burn, or chicken soup for whatever ails you? (Ah, but have you heard of toothpaste for sores? Or tea bags for sunburn?)

My mother mystified us all, when we were children, by having more than one cure for each mishap. If one of us got a bee sting, and she was in the kitchen, she would go directly to the cupboard and get out the vanilla. If we were in the car, on some kind of trip, she’d get the closest smoker (there always was one, in those days!) to take a cigarette apart, wet the tobacco, and apply it to the sting. And if we were outdoors — having a picnic, say — she would grab some mud and put it on the affected area.

This ability of hers to heal us by using whatever was at hand gave her a kind of rough-and-ready aspect, in our eyes, and enhanced her aura of maternal infallibility. And whatever we came up with in the way of physical ills or problems, she had a solution to offer — usually right from the kitchen. Upset stomach? Try a little baking soda in a glass of lukewarm water. Worried about having bad breath? Chew some parsley — or coffee grounds, if you can stand them. (I always found the parsley far more tolerable.) Tummy ache? Sit on the floor, put your arms around your knees, and rock backward and forward for a while.

It occurs to me that perhaps this role my mother played in our family’s life has been women’s role since time began. My grandmother’s answer to everything was Milk of Magnesia, so I was forever grateful that Mother had learned to think outside that box. My Aunt Mera relied on vinegar for quite a bit, and she must have been onto something, because now you can buy it in pill form in health-food stores, where it is offered as a detoxifying agent, a help for arthritis pain, and an aid to digestion. My Aunt Edith, who was ahead of her time, used mayonnaise to condition her hair, made a facial scrub out of oatmeal, and swore by garlic as a natural antibiotic. And after an auto accident propelled her through a car windshield and she ended up with more than 100 stitches in her face, she made medical history by putting her own mixture of lanolin and Vitamin E on her sutures and ending up without a single scar.

I’m not nearly as adventurous or creative as my fabulous forebears when it comes to home remedies. Outside of the salt-water gargle, my own favorite fix for whatever ails me is to fill a hot-water bottle with hot water, lie down, and apply the bottle to the pain. Works every time. Well, almost.

Susan Harper is retired. She volunteers for the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program. She lives in Commerce.