Vapor Rub

My mother just emailed and asked how I was feeling. We communicate via phone and email and now via this blog, which is kind of weird in one sense (my parents get to read about my life whether I want them to or not) and kind of nice in another sense (I get to share my life with my parents...something many of my friends don't get a chance to do). I guess it all depends on how you look at it.

Often when I am sick, I call my mother. I don't know why. I just like to tell her that I don't feel well and that I need my mother. I don't think I really DO need her, but it's nice to hear both their voices (my mom's and dad's) and though it doesn't cure what ails me, I feel a smidge better afterwards.

This cold has been a killer, but finally I'm on the mend. Halfway through the week I figured out that, while the cough syrup was helping, the thing I really needed was Vick's Vapor Rub...which ironically brings me back to my parents.

I don't know what's REALLY in that stuff, but as I stood in the bathroom staring at my sick and pathetic self in the mirror, just the thought of putting that greasy goop on my chesk made me feel better. I slept like a baby that night -- all 12 hours as I went to bed almost immediately after I got home from work. The next night I did the same routine...downed the metallic flavored cough syrup and lathered my chest with Vick's. I even dabbed a little under my nose, just like my parents used to do and once again slept through the night soundly.

It was the sleep that helped, but I really think it was the Vick's too. Maybe it doesn't really do anything, but for me, it brings back memories as well as comforts me when I'm sick. Much like the phone call to my mother, when I'm coughing up a lung or blowing my nose raw, calling her is soothing. I can remember my mother and her rough fingertips massaging the stuff into my chest when I was just a little kid or my dad gently applying a dab in the "V" of my unbuttoned nightshirt. "This will help," they'd both tell me and I believed them.

Maybe it's the Vick's. But maybe it's that I still believe they were right and that belief makes me feel better. Hard to say, but for me, there is nothing better than a scoop of Vapor Rub, a phone call home, and a long night's sleep to make me well again.