I Swear, Momma Was A Voodoo Priestess Back In The Day

If there is anybody who appreciates the advances in technology, it’s me. We’ve got AI technology mimicking voices and giving life to pre-existing photos. We’ve got programs that will write documents for you if you tell them what you want. You can put a watch on your wrist and it will tell you how many steps you take, your heart rate, blood pressure, even how long you slept and when.

Cars will parallel park and tell you when someone is passing behind you as you back out of your driveway. Cameras will identify faces to focus on when you take pictures, and software will eliminate items from photos that you don’t want in the finished product. Gadgets will tell you where you are and how close you are to the establishment of your choice.

But nothing in this world seems to be able to cure what ails you like your mother. In fact, looking back on all the things she could do…

I Swear, Momma Was A Voodoo Priestess Back In The Day

I’ve said it dozens of times. I was a 70s child and an 80s teen. Simpler times, when we relied on our wits and the most basic of resources to get things done.

I mentioned earlier that it’s a great time to be alive, all things considered. But something about the healing practices of my mother back in the 70s, dude. It was beautiful. It was miraculous. It was magic.

I can’t remember all of the things she did, but somehow, no matter how strange (or how embarrassing), they worked. I mean, I can remember the times when…

• She put a (brass) key around my neck to wear to school (I forget the ailment).
• She put slices of onions in my socks and made me wear them to bed.
• She put a spoon down my back for yet another ailment.
• She taped a penny to my forehead and had me lay down and take a nap.

…and so forth and so on.

For the record, my brothers weren’t exactly fans of the onions in the socks thing. Between that and my funky feet, they often sat up in disgust, staring at me while I stunk up the bedroom.

But it ain’t like they didn’t have their days either.

Now it’s true. Many of today’s medicines are just laboratory-manufactured recreations of many of the medicines of old, passed down from generation to generation. Because they worked! People used the Aloe vera plant for skin, so some genius decided to make it a gel, ointment, and cream and sell it, making them (the industry as a whole) a huge chunk of change.

And I know that there are chemical properties in brass and silver that help with certain conditions. Again, I can’t remember which because the longer and farther away I got from momma as I got older, the more I clung to the miracles of modern medicine -aka- an over-the-counter bottle of whatchamajiggy pills or 5 ounces of thingamabob in a bottle with a dropper. Yeah, the pharmaceutical world has acknowledged the powers of natural medicines and put them in a plastic container, claiming them for their own.

If you ask me, they’ve even identified a cure for a great many diseases and conditions, beginning with the common cold. I still laugh, though (although I didn’t understand it then), whenever I watch the 1973 Disney movie The World’s Greatest Athlete. In it, the Witch Doctor Gazenga (Roscoe Lee Browne) is talking to an American at a party about his studies in medicine and mentions his progress in his research for the cure for the common cold. When he adds that he has been given a sizeable grant for his work, the other gentleman asks, “To further your research?”

Dr. Gazenga replies, “No. To keep my mouth shut.”

That’s scary, knowing that these cures just might be out there, but there is too much money to be lost by the industry (cold and flu medicines, doctor visits, vaccinations, etc.) if the world knew the truth. Thus, the coughing, wheezing, and sneezing continues.

But that’s my momma, always putting some natural concoction together that she rubbed on our chest, which did a better job than the Vick’s Vapor Rub and other things we now pay top dollar for.

And then there was this one mixture where my mother put some unknown substance in a pan and sautéed with other crazy ingredients until it made this sticky paste that she put on my neck and chest and sent me off to school when I got sick. I tell you what, I felt 100 times better, even though I stunk up the classroom to high heaven.

It didn’t exactly make my classmates come running to sit with me in the lunchroom either.

So yeah, laugh at me if you want. I don’t care if I wore a chicken bone as an amulet, bouncing around my neck as I ran laps in gym class. Momma did what she had to do to keep us vertical, conscious, and functional.

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Today, she’s 85 years old and somewhere around Stage 5 with her dementia, where just about all of her memory is gone, and she’s battling certain physical dysfunctions. She’s a shell of her former self, spending most of her time smiling at whomever comes to visit and identifying themselves.

Her days in the kitchen are far behind her, as are the smothering hugs and kisses she used to lovingly give each and every one of us, healthy or sick (of course, passing viruses from one child to the next in the process, although she seemed to be immune to everything). If you were to talk to her, all you would get is the childish innocence she brought with her as she entered this world.

Still, I can’t help but believe that, despite her state, if someone so much as sneezed, she’d jump right up and head to that kitchen, grabbing everything in sight and putting together another one of those Eufaula, Alabama-taught cures.

I can see it now – people who haven’t walked in years, running laps around the nursing facility…

…and all of them smelling like crow’s feet and grated onions, seared in castor oil and calamine lotion.

Cause momma was a Voodoo Priestess.

And momma made everythannng alriiiiiight.

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