Naomi Gladish Smith

Our family had some unusual stresses during my childhood, fleeing England at the beginning of World War II and moving around America, but as I look back I realize we had a sense of security, a feeling that that no matter what might darken our world, my parents would hold chaos at bay. 

And part of that feeling of order and security was due to a shoe box filled with neatly arranged bottles of homeopathic medicine.

Homeopathy was about as close as my father came to having a hobby.  No matter how tired he might be, when one of us succumbed to a current childhood illness, he'd go off to study his materia medica and check the shoe box. Then he’d carefully fold a piece of paper and shake a miniscule heap of granuales into it.

"Stick out your tongue," he’d say. "Don't chew, let them dissolve."

And I’d suck the sweet, alcohol tinged pellets, savoring the sugary grains.

Did those pills really work?  I don’t know. Regardless of their curative powers, sucking the sugary little globules was infinitely comforting.  Just hearing the names was soothing.   Gelsemium, Aconite, Belladonna, Arnica lingered as pleasantly in the ear as their taste did on the tongue.      

The shoe box came with us wherever we went. Homeopathy, far more than just a medical exercise, was perhaps my father’s way of keeping order amid the uncertainties of his life.  And though it is not my way, I cherish its comforting presence. 

Though I don’t know what it’s for, I’ve had a bottle of Bryonia on my dresser for years.

It sits there now.