A lime saves the day (2/9/04)

The good news is that my daughter’s niece is no longer hexed. The bad news is that she hasn’t been baptized yet so there is a still possibility that someone could give her the evil eye and hex her all over again.

The child was napping at the home of a friend of her mother’s and had a nightmare. The lady of the house, from a different culture than mine, decided that the nightmare was caused by a hex. She conducted a ceremony to confirm this. Then, being a kind woman, she performed a ritual to remove the hex. As I haven’t heard about the child having any more nightmares, it must have worked.

My daughter related this story to a coworker who was from the same culture. The coworker said that she had to perform this rite on all of her own children. Then she said to prevent this from happening again the mother should place a lime in a glass of water and put it beside the child’s bed. She didn’t mention that the child should also be baptized. I guess the lime serves as enough protection.

If I had known it was that easy I would have bought a whole case of limes when my brother was small. He had nightmares almost every night for what seemed like a year. It didn’t seem to bother him any, as he slept through them, but it sure did wake up the rest of us.

This business of being hexed sounds like a lot of nonsense to many of us. However, it is no stranger than the thought of a little blue or yellow magic pill (potion?) taking the place of an entire piece of my body as my thyroid medication is supposed to do.

Sometimes I regret that we live in such modern times. It would be so much simpler if we could say a few words, drop a lime into a glass of water and be done with it. Instead, we beat ourselves up trying to figure out what we have done to cause nightmares in our toddlers.

We do many strange things to our children all in the name of helping them avoid some problem. I wore the “braintooth” of a hog around my neck when I was little. My mother said this isn’t really a tooth but is the eardrum of the hog. My mother saved this thing and offered it to me when my daughter was teething with the promise that it would help. I refused to tie it around her neck as I was convinced she would strangle herself with the string. Nobody I have ever talked to has any idea exactly what this “braintooth” really is.

One of my coworkers was coerced into tying a yellow ribbon on her infant’s wrist to “keep his soul from escaping” while he was a baby. The theory was that baby’s souls are fragile and aren’t fully anchored in place. It obviously worked, as she has never said anything to indicate he doesn’t have a soul, although she confesses that she sometimes wonders about him. Oh, dear. Maybe she didn’t tie the ribbon tight enough.

In the past we were told to make sure our babies slept on their tummies so they wouldn’t choke. Now mothers are advised to force the child to sleep on its back so it won’t mysteriously die during the night. Placing a glass with fruit in it beside the child’s bed and allowing it to sleep however it wants would be so much easier.

It might be a bit messy if there are pets in the house. I can’t imagine our cat allowing a full glass of water to survive the night. God forbid one should try this in a house with dogs as pets! The dog would drink the water, and use the fruit as a ball. Would that eliminate all the good the water was supposed to do?

We have our own strange rituals to cope with life. Instead of blaming things on hexes, we blame disease. We call healing ceremonies doctor’s appointments or hospital visits. The nasty brews we take are termed medicine and in my experience are about as effective as any concoction that any shaman could come up with.

Sometimes I long for a time when we could call on all our friends and relatives to get together with a medicine man who would perform a few chants, make an intricate sand painting then effect a cure for whatever ails a body. Plus there is the added benefit that this is a social occasion. There is always an energy one gets from a crowd. Imagine if we could harness that energy to create a cure for someone.

Too bad we view all that as mumbo-jumbo. Having all your friends and relatives around you, praying for you, seems much nicer than our practice of sending cards because we don’t know what to say. It seems much more positive than sitting naked in some strange doctor’s office waiting for them to hand down a death sentence. Do you think that we are becoming disillusioned with what we call modern medicine and that is why alternative medicine is gaining popularity?

I don’t know. All I know is that I’m thinking of stocking up on limes and storing them in the medicine cabinet with all the other potions such as Nyquil and aspirin. It can’t hurt and might make the cabinet smell better.[[In-content Ad]]