The Way of Flowers
“Daily, ask yourself which herbs you should take. You need to tonify. You’ve just forgotten to use your therapeutic arts.”
I sighed and scowled. While no grimace would quiet her advice, my scrunched face, momentarily, made me feel powerful.
I maintained that contortion until she pulled the last needle from my body. I then watched my acupuncturist deposit those miniature spikes into her treatment room’s sharps container. In truth, I would have gladly hung back on her heated table for hours.
Nonetheless, I pulled on my shoes and socks and sipped at the cup of water that she left for me. I stiffened upon anticipating the chaos that might ensue if I failed to get home before dinner.
Shortly thereafter, rather than turn on the air conditioner, I rolled down my car’s side windows. The route from the alternative clinic to my apartment passes by small parks that are full of greenery. I wanted to see and smell that vegetation.
Ironically, before I’d become a mom, I’d focus on footnotes and on grading quizzes. Academia offered me little space for any fascination with petals, stems, or bulbs. Not until many years later, when I was more fecund with fetuses than citations, did I slow down enough to tincture umbellifers (but not daisies–they’re toxic.)
Furthermore, my command of plant lore was extremely useful when my children suffered from multiple allergies. Whereas a distant pharmacist could be relied upon to distill antidotes free of colors and flavors, minor respiratory ailments and skin rashes, most of which were due to my sons and daughters’ histaminic responses to allergens, could be successfully addressed by “green medicine.”
Not only did my offspring reach their double digit birthdays without artificial sweeteners, but they grew up knowing that chamomile tea cures tummy aches and that calendula cream can sooth irritations of the epidermis (however, since they grew up among children whose mothers were not plantswomen, my youngins, additionally, insisted on having access to a grand stock of adhesive bandages, lots of which were covered with depictions of real or imaginary critters.)
Epochs have seemingly passed since the period when I was tremendously sleep deprived because of the needs of my human sprouts. It has been equally long, too, since any friend or acquaintance realized that I was a phytotherapist. The women of the current portion of my life know me as a frumpy, pleasant grandma, nothing more and I have no need to correct them.
Meanwhile, my grown brood views me as their kookie elder whose healthcare irregularities “likely arose from Woodstock” (those young adults forget that I was merely an elementary schooler when that festival took place.) Plus, my husband sees me as an endearing, lumpy woman with whom he’s shared life for nearly half of a century. He bypasses my offers of roots or leaves in favor of widely available over-the-counter drugs.
Regardless, my desk remains strewn with various potions. Whereas I used to infuse my own simples, I’ve mainly discontinued using my resources to fashion those elixirs. Enough reliable companies eventually came into being to enable me, now, to procure affordable remedies without filling up my kitchen counters with equipment and jars of “smelly” concoctions.
All things being equal, I am often so preoccupied with physical therapy exercises or with cooking low salt and low oxalate meals for Computer Cowboy and me, respectively, that I forget what I have stored in my neocortex. When stressed, brain fog causes me to weigh the pros and cons of nonprescription responses to facets of my compromised physical condition. Fortunately, people in my inner circle, such as my acupuncturist, remind me that there are answers that offer fewer side effects and that those answers are tucked inside of me.
Nevertheless, at the moment, all of my decades of learning about and employing green allies does nothing for me per dissuading conventional carers from pushing their protocol as the “only” route to well-being. When I am ill or injured and have to work with such narrowmindedness I become especially drained. To me, medicos have knowledge and skills; they will never be deities.
Consequently, I’m fortunate that there are reflective health professionals who help me on my integrated path and who remind me that I’m still an herbalist possessed of all of the insights yielded by training, to me, hitherto. So, I’m returning to “the way of flowers,” per se. It’s not so much that I’m an advocate of Bach Flower Therapy (which, actually, I’m not) as it is that I recognize and hold dear the idea that Hashem creates solutions before He creates tests and that I cherish that part of His generosity that is nature.
Our ability to think critically is another aspect of His generosity. Except in crises that find us incapacitated, during which time we necessarily have to rely on others to select among care choices for us, it not only behooves us, but is commanded to us, to guard ourselves.
As a result, I’m more than grateful for the aide-mémoire, from my acupuncturist, to integrate my ingrained understandings about bodily soundness in my present-day decision-making, whether such incorporation consists of looking to specific restorations or of recollecting that I oughtn’t to be afraid to ask questions of authorities. My green knowhow might be finite, but my ability to partner with my nurturers continues to be relative as well as needed.
