Wonderful, Tara! Your poems are as potent as an old-fashioned cure-all.
And Bag Balm! Assuming that stuff can be absorbed through the skin, I must have physically been around 10% Bag Balm as a child. 🤣 I was sent to bed "sulky and stinking" many times!
Adam, I LOVE that you experienced Bag Balm, too! It's such a New England thing. I've even gotten my husband using it on his hands in the winter. He'll put it on his poor, cracking thumbs right before bed and the smell transports me back to childhood. So funny.
I remember this red medicine my mom would put on cuts. It stained your skin and stung. I begged for Bactine, but she insisted this other stuff worked. I can’t even remember what it was called.
I hated that stuff. Mercurochrome? Was that it? Ugh. My daughter had such dry hands when she was child, but she hated lotion of any kind. So I'd wait until she fell asleep and slather her hands in Bag Balm or that Norwegian Formula stuff. Then she'd wake up in the morning, her hands looking so much better and say, "See, Mama. I told you I didn't need lotion." Sometimes it's easier to be sneaky than fight the battles.
Ah this is such a rich pool of memory. I dont know those products specifically (we had different stuff growing up in Ireland) but I do know the stuff.. the cure.. that bottle that came out for every scrape and cut which would turn the pain into agony... Thinking back I would almost say the harrowing moment following a grazed knee was more about the slow realisation that you'd have to suffer a wipe of the stingy orange bottle than the actual pain of the cut itself.
Or when you realised one day that you'd graduated to 7+ calpol and the flavour changed... Good grief!
Remedies loom large in childhood memories, don't they? It was such a moment for me the first time I uncapped a bottle of that ubiquitous thick, pink antibiotic for my own kids and smelled that terrible, familiar smell. I was transported back to my own childhood. Nasty stuff! Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Moving. I don’t recall if it was said aloud, but the “it’s awful so it’s working” mantra was at least implied in my childhood too. It’s oddly lovely to be reminded!
It's funny, isn't it? Childhood memories are full of conflicting emotions for me, but that impulse they had to care for me, even if it meant subjecting me to something they themselves hated as children, is something that connects the generations in such a lovely way. I have no doubt, if my children ever have kids, they'll slather their rashes with Bag Balm. And I kinda love that.
Wow. I read this out loud (it's instinctive with your poems) and had to pause for a moment after the fifth stanza. This is powerful stuff (just like your parents' home remedies).
Thank you. I find myself wondering what my parents would make of this poem. Would they like it? Hate it? Would it surprise them? Thanks so much for being here and being so friendly to my poems. 😊
I’ve been surprised by how kind my parents have been to my poems. I know they’re not always easy to read. My dad in particular has read so many poems I’ve written about him and has only had a writerly reaction to them. That takes a lot of maturity and guts. I bet your parents would be so proud and happy to see you expressing yourself. It’s just a stranger’s guess 💛. I know that my heart swells with joy when I see my children expressing themselves through art.
Tara, love the way you bring both of your parents into image for me as a reader. I get such a swift and strong sensation of these experiences. Which is wonderful. I also really enjoy the use of color and object. :)
And the idea that the awfulness means it's working is so true. When I was in high school and college it was Buckley's cough syrup. I both loved and hated that stuff. But the intensity of the flavor always convinced me it was helping. 😂
A whiff of a particular brand of sun-tan lotion, and I am a tiny girl back at "The River" with my sisters and my mom, who pulls the tube of Sea 'n Ski out of her cotton tote to anoint us all.
Wonderful, Tara! Your poems are as potent as an old-fashioned cure-all.
And Bag Balm! Assuming that stuff can be absorbed through the skin, I must have physically been around 10% Bag Balm as a child. 🤣 I was sent to bed "sulky and stinking" many times!
Adam, I LOVE that you experienced Bag Balm, too! It's such a New England thing. I've even gotten my husband using it on his hands in the winter. He'll put it on his poor, cracking thumbs right before bed and the smell transports me back to childhood. So funny.
I remember this red medicine my mom would put on cuts. It stained your skin and stung. I begged for Bactine, but she insisted this other stuff worked. I can’t even remember what it was called.
I hated that stuff. Mercurochrome? Was that it? Ugh. My daughter had such dry hands when she was child, but she hated lotion of any kind. So I'd wait until she fell asleep and slather her hands in Bag Balm or that Norwegian Formula stuff. Then she'd wake up in the morning, her hands looking so much better and say, "See, Mama. I told you I didn't need lotion." Sometimes it's easier to be sneaky than fight the battles.
I think that might have it. Mercurochrome. I love the story about putting the balm on your daughter’s hands at night. Sounds like a poem.
Ah this is such a rich pool of memory. I dont know those products specifically (we had different stuff growing up in Ireland) but I do know the stuff.. the cure.. that bottle that came out for every scrape and cut which would turn the pain into agony... Thinking back I would almost say the harrowing moment following a grazed knee was more about the slow realisation that you'd have to suffer a wipe of the stingy orange bottle than the actual pain of the cut itself.
Or when you realised one day that you'd graduated to 7+ calpol and the flavour changed... Good grief!
Remedies loom large in childhood memories, don't they? It was such a moment for me the first time I uncapped a bottle of that ubiquitous thick, pink antibiotic for my own kids and smelled that terrible, familiar smell. I was transported back to my own childhood. Nasty stuff! Thanks, as ever, for reading.
Moving. I don’t recall if it was said aloud, but the “it’s awful so it’s working” mantra was at least implied in my childhood too. It’s oddly lovely to be reminded!
It's funny, isn't it? Childhood memories are full of conflicting emotions for me, but that impulse they had to care for me, even if it meant subjecting me to something they themselves hated as children, is something that connects the generations in such a lovely way. I have no doubt, if my children ever have kids, they'll slather their rashes with Bag Balm. And I kinda love that.
Wow. I read this out loud (it's instinctive with your poems) and had to pause for a moment after the fifth stanza. This is powerful stuff (just like your parents' home remedies).
Thank you. I find myself wondering what my parents would make of this poem. Would they like it? Hate it? Would it surprise them? Thanks so much for being here and being so friendly to my poems. 😊
I’ve been surprised by how kind my parents have been to my poems. I know they’re not always easy to read. My dad in particular has read so many poems I’ve written about him and has only had a writerly reaction to them. That takes a lot of maturity and guts. I bet your parents would be so proud and happy to see you expressing yourself. It’s just a stranger’s guess 💛. I know that my heart swells with joy when I see my children expressing themselves through art.
I think you’d like this, plus another by the same writer about her grandmother’s pessaries. https://open.substack.com/pub/wendyvarley/p/teddy-bear-eyes?r=14br2&utm_medium=ios
Tara, love the way you bring both of your parents into image for me as a reader. I get such a swift and strong sensation of these experiences. Which is wonderful. I also really enjoy the use of color and object. :)
And the idea that the awfulness means it's working is so true. When I was in high school and college it was Buckley's cough syrup. I both loved and hated that stuff. But the intensity of the flavor always convinced me it was helping. 😂
A whiff of a particular brand of sun-tan lotion, and I am a tiny girl back at "The River" with my sisters and my mom, who pulls the tube of Sea 'n Ski out of her cotton tote to anoint us all.