Mama's Home Remedies: Discover Time-Tested Secrets of Good Health and the Pleasures of Natural Living (32 page)

I ran the last 10 steps until I was finally inside the house. There it was warm and cozy. Inside was the aroma of lilac and lavender and Papa played Peter Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons” on the piano in our
gostinaya
(a family room). The aroma of lilac flowed from a slick, purple candle, homemade in Grandma’s “laboratory.” As it slowly burned down, it cried fragrant lilac tears, drop by drop, falling onto a shiny silver plate in rhythm to the magnificent Tchaikovsky’s summer part of “The Seasons”—“Barcarolle.” I knew that Papa missed summer too.

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Birch logs snapped and crackled in the fireplace, throwing sparks of the golden amber tongues of fire. The flames danced and curled wildly, but their show wasn’t contained to the fireplace. They threw their shadows on the far side of the room, where their pale yellow and tangerine reflections trembled on the dark wall.

I felt peaceful and comfortable there. The warm atmosphere always made me feel cozy. I loved to read a good book there or daydream about mysterious places. I imagined flights on a magic carpet. I dreamed about an adventurous voyage on a “flying vessel” set to explore far away countries and discover new lands. It was my winter “Dream Garden” filled with books instead of plants. This memory is often brought back to me by the aromas of lilac, lavender, and burning birch and the sounds of Tchaikovsky’s unforgettable music. We had thousands of books in our home library. Reading was one of my favorite pastimes, especial y in winter. We didn’t have computers and computer games when I was growing up. We didn’t have television broadcasts with boring, upsetting news and undelivered promises by politicians. It could never have substituted or competed anyway with the world of classic literature and music. I savored the time I had to read masterpieces of literature, created by talented people throughout the world through the centuries. I convinced myself that the books would substitute successfully in the wintertime for all the fine, soft-petaled spring flowers; the bounty of sweet-smelling summer blossoms and herbs, their scents made stronger by the heat of the summer sun. I imagined that the books I held in my hands were paper flowers, blooming with brilliant human thoughts, so I developed a “strange” habit. It amazes me now how dedicated I was to reading and how I read each book voraciously as if I were a starving peasant with an insatiable appetite, gobbling down each word as if it were my last bit of bread, my last drop of honey. I read volume after volume of Jules Vern’s science fiction, Alexander Dumas’ novels, and James Fennimore Cooper’s colorful adventures. I devoured the works of Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Honore de Balzak, Gustave Flaubert, Theodore Dreiser’s dramas, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare’s tragedies, and Walt Whitman’s poems. It was a feeding frenzy. I never stopped reading an author’s collection. I read volume after volume until I finished all of them. It was my passion. Reading was what I most hungered for in my life. I read all of their works, including the epistle genre: the letters they wrote to loved ones, friends, and other writers.

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With all the tomes of literature at my fingertips, it was hard to say what I loved most, but I have to admit that my favorite books—even now—are unforgettable folktales and fairy tales from around the world. I had heard plenty of them from Grandma and I fell in love with these anthologies and will hold them dear to my heart for the rest of my life because these tales are good and wise. They reflect our real life, and they are a bright example of intelligent human thought. They became for me a window to the world and a brilliant tool with which to learn about it. After all, these beautiful stories came to me from the Fairyland, the mystical, magical land of fairies. I learned a lot from fairy tales told by Dutch storyteller Hans Christian Andersen. I read almost all of them. Sometimes I explore his storehouse even now, and I find always there a mix of fantasy and true-life experience. I am full of wonder. I have learned about destiny, and I admire the noble actions of his heroes. I find I effortlessly float into his fairy tales and transcend this real life and all at once I am a character in another realm.

Our big candle shone with a small orange fire and quietly burned down, marking time by growing smaller, dropping purple tears, sharing the lovely ambiance of which it was a part with all of us in the room, its heady fragrance of lilac intoxicating us. Very soon this flower would celebrate spring in Grandma’s Dream Garden, but winter was still upon us and so I nestled comfortably into a chair and read Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Candles,”

a beautiful fairy tale written in 1870.

There was once a big wax candle which knew

its own importance quite well. “I am born of

wax and molded in a shape,” it said. “I give better light

and burn longer than other candles. My place is in a chandelier or on a silver candlestick!”

“That must be a lovely existence!” said the tallow candle. “I am only made of tallow, but I comfort myself with the thought that it is always a little better than being a farthing dip: That is only dipped twice, and I am dipped eight times, to get my proper thickness. I am content! It is certainly finer and more fortunate to be born of wax instead of tallow, but one does not settle one’s own place in this world. You are placed in the big room in Trips to the Fairyland @ 225

the glass chandelier, I remain in the kitchen, but that is also a good place; from there the whole house gets its food.”

“But there is something which is more important than food,” said the wax-candle. “Society! To see it shine, and to shine oneself! There is a ball this evening and soon I and all my family will be fetched.”

Scarcely was the word spoken, when all the wax-candles were fetched, but the tallow candle also went with them. The lady herself took it in her dainty hand, and carried it out to the kitchen: a little boy stood there with a basket, which was filled with potatoes; two or three apples also found their way there. The good lady gave all this to the poor boy.

“There is a candle for you as well, my little friend,” said she. “Your mother sits and works till late in the night; she can use it!”

The little daughter of the house stood close by, and when she heard the words ‘late in the night,’ she said with great delight, “I also shall stay up till late in the night! We shall have a ball, and I shall wear my big red sash!”

How her face shone with joy! No wax candle can shine

like two childish eyes!

“That is a blessing to see,” thought the tallow

candle; “I shall never forget it and I shall certainly never see it again.”

Maybe the tallow candle referred to a garden or a fairyland where she could never return again? But we can always return to our once-discovered fairyland. We can come as often as we want into our Dream Garden, our favorite place outdoors, which we are able to find anywhere we go or we can create our own—a place where we can restore and enjoy the magic of Nature, relax, rejuvenate, and live a healthy life filled with great books, beautiful flowers, mighty trees, and loving people.

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How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

—William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English playwright and poet
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Victory is the beautiful bright colored flower.

—Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965), British statesman, author, and prime minister
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The flowers that bloom in the spring bring to us a new life.

—Unknown

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I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows.

—Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance;

and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.

—Shakespeare,
Hamlet

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Dialogue with the Trees of Strength

and Everlasting Life

Like a great poet, Nature is capable of producing the most stunning
effects with the smallest means. Nature possesses only the
sun, trees, flowers, water and love.

—Henrich Heine (1797–1836), German poet and critic

FACTS:

A forest is an ecosystem characterized by trees with a unique combination of plants, animals, microbes, soil, and climate. Twenty-seven percent of the world’s total land area is covered in forests, which are home to more species of animals, birds, plants, and insects than any other environment on Earth. In the United States alone forests cover 747 million acres (301 million hectares) or 33 percent of the land base. Each year the forestry community plants 1½

billion tree seedlings in North America. This means more than six new trees for each North American. Satellite surveys confirm that across North America forests have actually expanded by 20 percent since 1970.

Forests are big factories producing oxygen. We need this product for our survival. Forests are greenhouse exchangers and clean our air by absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. Trees lock in carbon dioxide and return it to the soil when they decompose instead of releasing it into the air and contributing to pollution. By taking in the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere, trees help to reduce the “greenhouse” effect and remove Dialogue with the Trees of Strength and Everlasting Life @ 229

the “carbon debt” we put into the environment. To grow a pound of wood, a tree uses 1.47 pounds of carbon dioxide and gives off 1.07 pounds of oxygen. One large growing tree can provide a day’s oxygen for four people.38 Perhaps no other activity involves so many people as outdoor recreation, which is a major land use of a quarter of a billion acres of public land and as much private land. More than 90 percent of the population participates. It is a $20 billion a year industry with an annual government investment of an additional $1

billion.39

The Druids, the wise priests of ancient Gaul, Celtic Britain, and Ireland, believed that trees transfer vital energy to us. The degree to which trees give us energy is determined by our birth date. Their religion focused on the worship of nature deities, and their rituals and ceremonies were held mostly in oak groves. The Druids believed that each of us has our own biological field and that everyone corresponds to a tree that is similar to the characteristics of his or her own bioenergetics. This particular tree is our talisman, a guardian of our health.

My talisman, predestined by Mother Nature, according to the Druids, is the cypress tree. I had been intuitively attracted to cypress trees all my life, and so I now understand why. It was one of the mysterious forces which world scientists will explain to all of us some day.

My cypress was special, good-looking, fresh, and slender. He was as tall as a pyramidal tower of a castle built many years ago by the grandest architect in the world—Mother Nature. His upper branches stretched like crooked arrows to the sky. I saw his outstanding beauty for the first time as I walked down a lane of these cone-bearing giants that stood like courageous guards forming a long green wall.

July was hot and steamy in Crimea when I returned again to this centuries-old park for a vacation. At noon I took refuge in the shade where trees cast their shadows on the forest path. I approached one of my special cypress trees, which stood proudly in line with so many others. His unusual dark green overlapping leaves formed a pattern against the sky that would have rivaled the most delicate Venetian lace.

I was happy to meet again with my old green friend. I tried to enfold him with my arms as much as I could to feel his intense energy. The tree’s fragrant bark was slick with rainwater. “Salute, my friend! I have returned to see you 230 ^ Mama’s Home Remedies

again after a year,” I whispered. He answered me with a shimmering rustle of his twisted, silky, smooth needles. I felt serene near this composed giant. An easy, relaxed mood and confidence returned to me as I received from this tree a new supply of vital energy along with a positive emotional state that had been nearly depleted by all the hard work I had done during the past year. Perhaps I was also influenced by my belief that I should begin every new year of my life here, near my cypress.

The first time I saw a cypress tree I couldn’t understand why I was so attracted to it. I did not realize at the time that it had “called” me to it. Most people enjoy these evergreens as ornamental—a decoration; as an attribute to resorts; or as a material with which to build furniture, boats, or cedar chests. I admire cypress trees for another reason. I realize that pride and a strong spirit emanates from this tree. I believe that the dynamic intensity that propelled me to accomplish my dreams and goals came directly from this cypress. Grandma used to say that trees and emerald green forests are the lungs and eyes of the earth, which supply us with the oxygen that we need to survive.