Mama's Gift

I remember while growing up my mama doing some heroic and awesome things that I couldn't quite understand at the time. But as I grew older and learned from watching her it came to me so clear that she knew what she was doing without a doubt. She taught me so much over the years and set examples for all of us to live by. Like so many others she knew and used a lot of home remedies that still sticks in my mind today but there's one thing she could do that I never could do is cure the Thrash (Thrush). It’s a fungal infection of the mouth that can be caused by many things. It comes with blisters on the tongue, inside the lips and can spread to the outside of the mouth on the lips and all around it.

 I remember so many people coming to our house for the much needed cure. Some were young'uns at the time or they brought their young'uns, and there's lots of grownups out there as well that still to this day remembers mama’s cure very well. It was always a secret on how she performed the actual cure and mama always said if anyone knew it wouldn’t work.

A lot of the people that came had been to the doctor to no avail. Mama would look in their mouth and be able to tell them what kind it was by what color the blisters were. There's three types, red, white and yellow. Daddy had the job of bringing in the medicine but like everyone else he never knew what she did. He knew where it grew and how much to get but he played shut mouth his whole life and mama wouldn’t have it any other way.

I saw her carry many a baby in the bedroom and bring it back out and it'd be smiling cause mama always had a way of pacifying young'uns. When it came to treating the grownups she’d put a blindfold on them so they couldn't see and I can attest to that cause one evening we were out in my back yard and I told her my mouth was sore and had been getting worse by the day. She looked in my mouth and slipped across the creek on our little foot log and came back and blindfolded me and I never felt or seen anything and needless to say, it got better. Shucks, I remember her taking my son when he was a toddler into the corn patch one day and treating him. 

She always told everyone that on the third day after she did it, it would get worse but should get better, if not come back and she'd do it again. I know one older lady that came three times cause it had went all the way through her and she'd wore herself out running to the doctors, then she heard about mama. It finally worked and she praised mama till the day she died.

 Mama even went to them when they were to sick to come to her due to other ailments. There were a couple of ladies that had just got through with chemo treatments and their mouths were turned wrong side out. She treated them and they got better. Mama was so honored to help them and anyone else that came along.

 Mama's cure became so popular her own doctor started sending his Thrash (Thrush) patients to her after he learned about it. But unlike him, she never charged a dime cause she said if she did it wouldn't work.

Yes, it got mighty tiring for her but she never complained or turned anyone down till she got down so sick herself with cancer. It hurt her so bad not to not be able to do the things she loved and had done all of her life. It's so sad that there wasn't a cure to be found for her but mama is now healed and living in a new, pain, free body. When mama left us she left some mighty, big shoes to fill and we may not be able to do all the things she did but her Legacy of love and giving will go with us the rest of our days.

Genuine faith is the faith that works by love and purifies the soul. A living faith will be a working faith.

                                            © Susie Swanson, 2015