bob marley and mary poppins

Today’s title seems an unlikely convergence of musical icons. Yet, this peculiar combination proved a recipe for recovery as my family fell like dominoes to influenza. Music and movies surely helped five days of severe fatigue, inertia, et al pass more quickly. If you thought a spoonful of medicine helps the medicine go down was the main attraction, you are wrong! Instead it was stir it up, little darlin’.

I often subscribe to naturopathy, so we had a mélange of flavors and concoctions to consume. Licorice tasting immune glycerite and tart tasting cough glycerite, freshly brewed by my naturopath, accompanied thousands of IUs of vitamin D to combat the virus. The trick was to get a small child to swallow these healing elements. That’s where the little medicine cups were handy. I have some sweet, tiny stoneware mugs. Add a little ginger ale and maple syrup to the herbs, and sing together stir it up, little darlin’! Worked every time.

I’m sure some of you quietly shuddering readers pictured this practice as something more like brimstone and treacle, a song by the anti-nanny from the Broadway version of Mary Poppins. It was a great ritual, really! Dessert was ultra-fragrant chicken soup delivered to the porch by a dear neighbor and pictured above along with the other accoutrements. After couch sitting and humming along through Mary Poppins many times, Bob Marley got us moving vertically. A reggae beat is truly the rhythm of influenza when you need to stand up and do something.  Let’s get together and feel alright!