An Ounce of Intervention

An ounce of intervention, my grandmother liked to tell me, will keep the wolves away.

She had very little use for doctors and through maladies, major and minor, would keep her distance. She favored home remedies whenever possible - castor oil for any stomach ailment, garlic for arthritis pain, vinegar for sunburn, chamomile tea and lavender oil for pretty much anything else from gout to premature graying hair. She kept a full section of the pantry devoted to seeds, foul smelling little bottles of various extracts, seaweed and powders. I hardly ever saw her take as much as an aspirin even on those days when her arthritis flared and her hands swelled so badly that she was near crippled.

My mother dismissed these home cures as superstition and witchery, preferring to rely on pills and other doctor prescribed medications for any and all ailments. The two women clashed often, my mother being prone to take to her bed at the slightest sign of illness, my grandmother refusing to be stopped by anything less than a broken bone. Martyr! my mother would snap. Malingerer! Nana would snap right back. And so it went. They could, it seemed, quarrel over anything - how much salt to add to the pot roast, whether the fog would clear, who would drive to Aunt Pearl's, how many serving spoons should there be on the table, what color of nail polish to use, what direction the wind was blowing. Sometimes these spats blew over, sometimes they took on a life of their own, but they never stopped. Conflict had become a lifestyle. My daddy, often called upon to arbitrate, recognized the folly of taking sides and quietly withdrew to a neutral corner. If you get between them, he advised me, they'll likely both turn on you.

It was a hostile household, two women too much alike to get along, and too different to leave each other be, each determined to have their own way. Any amount of intervention would've been a temporary distraction at best - it made far more sense to try and stay out of the line of fire and hope for a truce.