The best cold remedy: love and attention

The relatively warm winter is threatening to bring more ticks this spring, and it’s already delivering an unexpectedly large and vigorous batch of winter colds and flus.Doctors are available for actual medical advice. But with many illnesses, medicine isn’t what we rely on to fully restore ourselves. Sometimes what really works is a cool hand on a hot forehead, or a soothing cuddle on freshly changed sheets. In an informal round of interviews with area residents, the answers had one consistent theme: What made me feel better was having my mother spend a little extra time with me. This was as true for “only children” as it was for people who have multiple siblings.Whether you are a parent trying to figure out ways to comfort a child or an adult trying to remember what it was that made you feel better, the following is an unscientific sampling of suggestions. We didn’t add names because, really, what could be more personal than these stories? However, since my heritage will give away my identity on this one: When I was sick as a child my mother would always make me miso soup with large bits of seaweed in it. She would serve it in a large bowl and add rice. Here’s what other people told me:• When I was sick, my mother used to cut an apple in half and core it. Then she would sit with me and scrape out the center of the apple and feed it to me, like instant apple sauce. It was cool and refreshing, but the best part was that she was spending that extra time with me.• When I had a fever, which was often, my mother would sit with me and press cool, wet washcloths to my forehead. And she would change my sheets a lot.• The most comforting thing my mother did really was to stay by my side. She worked from home so staying home sick meant a day with mom, and it was always the best part to spend the time alone with her while Dad and my brother were at work and school.• I suffered from asthma as a child (still do, but not as badly), and my mom would dig out the humidifiers and turn the bathroom into a sauna using hot water from the shower.• First we’d get warm ginger ale, then we’d get chicken noodle soup and, when we started to get better, it would be cinnamon toast. And we got to stay at home in bed and listen to the radio. That was a real treat.• Vicks VapoRub rubbed on my chest always made me feel better, whether it worked or not. It just made me feel better to have someone doing something to take care of me.• My mother would let me stay in bed and read all day. • My mother would sing to me, the old-fashioned songs like “Good Night, Sweetheart.”• She would tickle my back and sing the Irish lullaby, “Toora, loora, loora.” And she used to give my sisters and me crushed ice with Coca Cola. That was a big deal because we were never allowed to have soda or anything with sugar in it. We had an old-fashioned ice grinder on the wall and she would grind the ice and pour it over the Coke. • Soap operas. My mom would let me stay in bed, and I’d watch soap operas all day. My favorite was “As the World Turns.” Even now, sometimes, if I’m feeling down, I’ll get in bed and watch the soaps. • My mother always made me creamed tuna on toast. It was tuna, milk and peas, thickened, on toast. It always made me feel good. I make it now for my daughter. We call it Ugly Tuna.• I used to get to stay home from school and lie on the couch and watch cartoons. • My father used to read to me from my favorite book, “The Book of Knowledge.” I used to love that. And my mother would make soup. It didn’t matter what kind of soup, and it didn’t matter whether I ate it or not. It was comforting, it made me feel better just to know that she had made it.• My mother would put Vicks VapoRub on our chests and then wrap a woolen scarf around our necks with a big pin and send us to school. • My mother would make us egg nog, with vanilla instead of whiskey. Back in those days you could still eat raw eggs because they were so fresh. They came from a nearby farm.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less