HI, MOM. JUST LOOK AT THE THINGS I REMEMBER

I've always rather liked the way people, when they unexpectedly get in the view of the TV camera, say, "Hi, Mom." You can seldom hear them, but those are words that you can surely lip read. At the same time, I've always felt a little sorry for dads.

One can interpret this remote greeting several ways. Maybe the person so speaking means, "Hi, Mom, look where I am," or "Hi, Mom, you never thought you'd see me here, did you?" Maybe it is some nonsensical thing like, "So's your old man," or "Hunky, hunky, do," but I don't think so. I think it is truly the first person one thinks about when he is away from home, probably far away, and has a chance to greet anyone in the world (CNN) and chooses Mom. It's just the natural thing to do. Mom was probably the first person you got really acquainted with. You looked up into her eyes while nursing, maybe stopped for a second to return a smile. Mom was the first one to pat the burp right out of your stomach, rock you in her arms when the colic was killing you and you were trying to tell her so. This list could go on and on, right through the heart shaking rigors of first school days, the terrible awkwardness of the teens, the tremulous courtship days, marriage, and the reassurance and strengthening of on-coming birth of your first baby.

Of course this is all according to whether or not you have a normal mother. With the advent of the drug culture abberations and mutations have occurred. That is another reason I like to see so many say, "Hi, Mom" on TV. It leaves me with the impression that there are still more normal mothers than otherwise.

Remembering the love, the solace, the kissing-away-the-hurt, the standing by, the gentle corrective measures, etc., mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, grandfathers too, when they reach the depths of sorrow, pain, despair, depression, remorse and all those sad things, cry out, either aloud or silently from their hearts. "Oh, Mom, I wish you were here." I have done it, more than once, and it seems that not long afterwards things straighten out.

Just last week I think I might have been a candidate for the Guinness Book of Records for the continuous duration of coughing. Of course I consulted the doctor, the pharmacist, friends, neighbors. If there had been a traveling medicine man passing by I would have invited him in. I set my impotent little potions, pills, syrups, colorful cough drops, lozenges all in a row on a windowsill and at times felt like taking aim at them with a sling-shot as one does ducks in a row at some carnival.

My imagination has stood me in good stead throughout the years, so I began to describe the source of this cough in imaginative terms in an effort to keep a tight-fisted clutch on sanity. This cough, I sez to myself, protrudes through the membranous lining of my esophagus about where the Adam's apple is located. Drawing a mental picture of its intrusion into my world, I could see that it was like a tiny tentacle of a dwarf octopus. Having broken through to a new world, it whirled around like a helicopter propeller to see all that could be seen and tickling everything it touched. I could cough and thus stomp it back down through the membrane, but the hideous little thing wouldn't stay stomped for more than three seconds before, there it was, back up again, strengthened and refueled and full of determination.

I drowned it with some brown syrup, the taste of which should have killed it. Hot coffee, warm salty water, Celestial tea, a spoonful of melted Vicks Vapor Rub and various other things were tried.

My Mind! I hadn't yet tried mind over matter. So I determined not to cough. I swallowed 57 times, stretched my throat up, down and around like a crazed loon, let tears run unchecked down my cheeks, all part of the mind's exercises. Matter won. And, at last, I said, sobbing into my pillow, "Oh, Mom, I wish you were here."

I remembered how, in the long ago nights when the house had grown cold and I was coughing continuously, she would poke up the fire in the kitchen range, wrap me in a warm blanket, pull up a rocking chair and attempt to rock the cough right out of me. Other than the rocking chair and reassuring love, there weren't a lot of other things in our medicine inventory in those days Vaseline, Rosebud salve, Cloverine salve, Black salve, turpentine, Musterole, liniment, and, fifteen miles up the frozen river, Uncle Matt McGee's elderberry wine, which most local folks thought about as all-effective-for-everything as black salve.

Mama didn't try all these things, only what she thought wouldn't kill me. Sitting in her little row of "ducks" was her bottle of glycerin and rosewater. It was used to soften our winter roughened hands. Maybe it was desperation, some inner inspiration, who knows; anyway she poured out a teaspoon full of it and I swallowed it every bit and licked the spoon. Then, snuggling back into her arms, continuous love pats keeping time with the simmering teakettle on the stove, the coughing ceased and we both, and all the rest of the household went to sleep.

With this memory arrived at, and knowing that a small bottle of glycerin reposed in some old crock full of little used stuff, I donned houseshoes, robe, glasses, and made my way to the basement, found the glycerin, twisted the aged cap from the bottle and took a swig. Who had time for measurement when octopi were growing in one's throat?

Back up stairs, I crawled into bed, promptly stopped coughing and went to sleep but not before saying, "Hi, Mom." Even as a sleepy afterthought, I stuck a hand out from beneath the blanket and made a V for victory sign.

Don't try this remedy before consulting your physician. Remember, add a little nitric and sulfuric acid to glycerin and you have nitroglycerine. You's heard of that, haven't you?

REJOICE!