FROM WHERE I SIT  ‘TIS THE SNEEZING SEASON  10/10/13    Pat DeKok Spilseth

 It’s that time of year when major bugs abound, waiting to catch you unawares.  They strike when you’re undernourished, in crowds of contaminated folks and overtired.  Being around kids in a classroom is the worst place to catch the sick bugs.  Then you usually end up flat on your back in bed coughing, sneezing, nauseous, dizzy and totally miserable.   

 I decided to avert such dire consequences.  I got my flu shot in the arm this afternoon.  Some administrators can make the shot painless, but today, it hurt.  I tell myself, the pain is worth not getting the flu...hope, hope.  Get the shot before they run out of the vaccine.  With my maligned immune system, I make it a point to head to the lines at a neighborhood drug store where nurses wait to innoculate patients and fill out the necessary forms.  

It’s cold season too.  I remember Mom’s warnings about flu and cold bugs.  I keep a jar of that trusty green and blue bottle of VICKS petroleum jelly in my night stand.  I swear that it works wonders for sore throats.   Nightly, I take a tiny whiff of the medicinal smell.  NO, I do not swallow a glob of VICKS like Mom did...just a whiff will do.  But if I start sneezing, coughing and feeling run down, I grease my neck and under my nose to clear the sinuses and wrap a wool sock around my neck, fastening it with a safety pin.  I know I don’t look particularily appealing all greased up, but it’s worth it if the Vicks wards off the bugs.  This procedure seems to produce deep heat, warming not only my neck but my entire body with its strong, mentolated magic. Though it stings my eyes, and they begin to water, I know the Vicks is working its powers on my body.  I feel better inhaling the strikingly pungent odor from the tiny blue jar.   It worked for Mom and our family when I was growing up.  Why toss away a good thing?  

Cod liver oil was Mom’s other remedy to ward off colds.  Like clockwork, every morning before I left for school, she poured a teaspoon of that oily, icky medicine for me to swallow.  I had to wash it down with a tiny glass of orange juice.  Nobody I knew could stand the unadulterated taste of cold liver oil sliding down our throats.  Cod liver oil combated colds, but that oily taste couldn’t be stomached without something to camophlauge the fishy taste.

When fall or winter colds struck, Mom insisted I put on my flannel pajamas and rest in bed.  She’d cover me with her percale sheets with the crocheted edges that Grandma Elizabeth had made years ago.  Snugly, she’d tuck me into bed with Dad’s gray, wool, army blanket and one of her patchwork quilts, that the aunts had stitched the past winter.  Those quilts were made of stitched squares of worn Pendleton wool shirts, wool pants, Mom’s house dresses and Aunt Sadie’s wool plaid skirts.  It was cozy; I could feel the love.  

Then came her best prescription, the sugar medicine.  Esther would cut a plump, yellow lemon in half, squeeze and twist in over the protruding knob of the glass juice squeezer.  Pale, yellow, lemon juice would spurt from the thick rind’s innards along with many seeds that had to be strained from the juice.  If I drank the sour, lemon juice straight, without any additives, I’d twist up my face with its strong sour taste.  However, Mom knew that if she warmed heaping spoons of sugar stirred into the sour lemon juice, she could have me sipping the sweet lemonade.  As it swam down my aching throat, hot lemon juice was a sure cure for a sore throat.   Sugar does help the medicine go down.

From storage, I’m pulling out my wool sweaters and warm slacks, winter coats and jackets, scarves and hats and mittens.  I don’t want to be caught short of warm duds when the white flakes start flying.   Recently, Dakota was immobolized with over 40 inches of snow; roads were closed; powerlines pulled down.  Misery accosted the plains!  Get ready; cold weather, flu bugs and fever are coming east.  Prepare for the worst.  725 words