Camomilla Cure-all

I wish my body recognized the magic Italians attribute to te camomilla.. . I should be able to sip the elixir and find instant relief for jangled nerves, depression, sleeplessness, indigestion, nausea, menstrual cramps, malaria, fever, dehydration (of course!), sluggish-liver, petulant gall bladder, colic, cystitis, kidney stones, hay fever, hiccups, vomiting, spastic pain, arthritis, asthma. I should be able to wash my hair with it and discover brighter highlights, find relief from dandruff. I should be able to wash my face with it and cure eczema, acne, quotidian pimples, actual wounds. I should be able to put the used tea bags over my eye-sockets and soak out all possible puffiness. The mighty Italian mosquito or zinzara should be no threat to me—if I bathe in the stuff.

Just look on the open shelves in my narrow but well-equipped kitchen. I have every one of the Twinnings varieties, Chamomile with Spearmint, Chamomile with Lime Flower, Chamomile with Vanilla, Chamomile with Spiced Apple, Organic Chamomile, just plain Chamomile. I have Italian varieties, both Pompadore and Sogno D’oro…with its steam misty cup and soothing crescent moon. Celestial Seasonings Varieties, to include “Wellness Tea” that combines chamomile with zinc and Echinacea to ensure a quick fix. I have a zip-lock baggie filled with dried Chamomile flowers—and it is not that my fetish is reserved for only varieties of Chamomile. English Breakfast, Earl Gray, all the Republic of Tea green tea varieties, Japanese plum blossom, the new African reds. For years I’ve been sure if I could just knock the coffee habit (I can’t!) and drink only teas I’d be offering my innards a soothing inner-bath and immunity from all plagues. Not that I am in anyway a hypochondriac or prone to plagues or other illnesses. But we all have our inglorious moments and our sudden desperate need for cure-alls.

Imagine the time I was in Venice for Carnevale, taking a bus because I’d found a deal, a bus of unknown student strangers ready for a wild and rollicking good time. Just as we are approaching Mestre, the wintry, watery city, the telltale eyeless white masks and plumes and harlequins and period costumes of yards and yards of gathered silk…it comes over me, a puking disease, that had not even announced itself with a foreboding headache or achey-ness. This is no mild bout of nausea but a full-fledged scourge—intent on disgusting all who travel with me, rendering companionship and joy in the bacchanalian rites we are about to explore—utterly impossible. “What you need is un po’ di camomilla,” the chaperon-esque mother-figure accompanying us insists, urging the bus to stop, so serene in her confidence she will inscribe on my soul forever my faith in un ‘po di camomilla. Had the tea no viable ingredients, the placebo effect would certainly have been enough that day, so intent was my mind on overcoming matter— to drink to the dregs and find myself instantly transformed into a masked dancer with a powdered wig.

Today has, alas, been a chamomile day—a day of staring into the steaming brew while willing it to do its magic as dog companion and I loll around under the ink-stained comforter hearing the terrace doors blow open in the storm but finding no strength to get up and close them. Such deluge and flying branches I have not seen in some time and it’s strangely satisfying to watch now that I am sitting upright against the pillows able to lift my head enough to see. For half the day I was visited by phantoms of delirium as I tried not to succumb to the waves that were rushing over me and trying to cast me to a place that does indeed seem a place (illness does have its fascinations). I did not cross over. I summoned all the strength I had to tiptoe to the kitchen and light the gas under the kettle.

I am still here. I am still writing. Sometimes that seems magic enough.

When is Carnevale this year anyway? Isn't it about that time?