Jean Anthony ~ Shadow Dancer

OLD MEDICINE THE BEST MEDICINE

My Grandmother, her Grandmother, and my Great Grandmother never even heard the word “Health Insurance.”

My Grandmother was born and raised the old way, high up in the mountains of what is now Northern Mexico. And much later when I was a young boy, I can recall going to outdoor markets with my Grandmother where she’d buy dried herbs of all sorts.

“What do you do with them Grandma?” I would ask. She would look at me and say, “I make medicine.”

And make medicine she did, she had her own homemade cures for anything and everything, and I mean just that. Yes, I had my share of aches, pains, stomach aches, even colds, but my Grandma always seem to know just what to make and give me. I didn’t really know what an aspirin was until many years later. I guess when my Grandma was alive I didn’t really need store bought medicine. I miss all her old ways, I miss her a lot. She was one of the old Diné, one of “the people” as we were known among ourselves.

And none of the old ones had any health insurance as we know it today. Sadly, just about all of the old ways and cures of my Grandma’s time are all but forgotten these days.