Appalachian Healing

Mama always said she'd teach me to make her blackberry cobbler this summer. Well, she died in May, so that plan got shot to hell real quick.

We were supposed to do our usual June walks up the mountain trails. Her showing me which weeds were good for what, me nodding along and forgetting half of it by the time we got home. Been doing that dance since I was sixteen. This summer was gonna be different though. We were finally gonna talk about Daddy and his drinking problem. Twenty years of dancing around that elephant in the room.

Then I found this letter.

Three weeks after we put Mama in the ground, I was going through her stuff. Trying to figure out what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away. Found this piece of paper stuck in her old The Magic of the Mountains book, the one she was always reading when folks came by asking for remedies.

Darling Rosie,

There are things I need to tell you before this old body gives up on me. Things about your grandmother's gifts that run in our blood. Things about the summer I was seventeen and thought I knew everything about love and loss.

That was it. Pen must've dropped right out of her hand. Two days before the stroke got her, according to the date at the top.

So here I am it's June, supposed to be going to Myrtle Beach with my girlfriends from college, getting sunburned and drinking too many margaritas. Instead, I'm driving up this twisty mountain road with a suitcase full of bikinis and flip-flops, crying behind my sunglasses.

The cabin looked like she was still there and just stepped out to check the garden. Her coffee mug still sitting by the sink, half full of cold coffee with a film on top that made my stomach turn. Mason jars everywhere, stuffed with dried up plants I couldn't name. Her reading glasses folded neat on the kitchen table like she was coming right back.

I figured I'd spend maybe three days packing everything up, then get back to Charlotte and my boring marketing job. Three days turned into three weeks. Three weeks turned into the whole damn summer. This mountain got its hooks in me somehow.

That letter drove me crazy. Read it so many times the paper started falling apart at the creases. What gifts was she talking about? Only thing special about Mama was how she always knew when people were getting sick. Show up at your door with chicken soup before you even felt the first sniffle coming on. Everyone in Marshall had stories like that about her.

Mrs. Patterson came by my second week there. Brought this awful tuna casserole that probably came from a church cookbook and tasted like it. Also brought stories I'd never heard before.

"Your mama saved my bacon more times than I can count," she said, settling into that old rocker on the porch. "Day my Bobby took off with that Williams girl from over in Greeneville, I was sitting in my kitchen bawling my eyes out at five in the morning. Hadn't told nobody what happened. Your mama knocked on my door with chamomile tea and a box of tissues. Still don't know how she figured it out."

"She always had good timing," I said, which sounded stupid even to me.

"Honey, your mama could look at a person and see straight through to whatever was eating at them. Like she had some kind of radar for pain." Mrs. Patterson kept rocking, making that awful squeaking noise. "You got the same look in your eyes, you know."

After she left, I wandered around Mama's garden. Recognized some things from when I was little. Lavender that smelled like her soap. Mint she'd put in sweet tea. Rosemary she used on everything she cooked. There was this patch of purple flowers way in the back corner that I'd never seen before. When I touched them, my fingertips got warm. Not normal warm either. Weird warm, like touching a lightbulb.

That night I found Mama's journal shoved under her bed. Must've been fifty years of entries in there. Weather reports mixed up with recipes mixed up with observations about people that made the hair on my arms stand up.

June 15, 1987 - Mary Jenkins came by today acting like everything's hunky-dory. Smiling big as you please, hands shaking like autumn leaves. Keeps rubbing her belly without knowing she's doing it. Fixed her some ginger tea with peppermint. Told her to take care of herself. She'll figure out what's going on soon enough.

June 22, 1987 - Mary's back, crying rivers. Says she's three months pregnant. How did I know? Same way Mama knew things before me. Same way Rosie's gonna know things if she ever quits running from it.

I flipped through more pages. Mama writing about me having "the sight" like her and her mama. How living in the city was making me forget where I came from. Maybe that's for the best, she wrote. This gift gets heavy to carry sometimes.

Got me thinking about my life in Charlotte. How I always knew which coworkers were about to get canned before the rumors even started. How I could tell when my friends' relationships were circling the drain, even when their Facebook posts looked all happy and perfect. Always figured I was observant. Good at reading people. Never thought it might be something else entirely.

Tommy Brewster showed up during my third week. I barely remembered him from high school. Quiet kid who lived with his grandmother after his folks died in that car wreck. He'd grown up tall and gangly, all arms and legs, face brown from working outside. Still had those sad eyes though. Some sadness sticks around forever.

"Heard you were staying up here," he said, twisting his baseball cap around and around in his hands. "Wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your mama. She did a lot for me after Mamaw passed."

I made coffee and he told me stories about Mama showing up when he needed her most. With food, with some kind of herbal tea, with somebody who'd just sit there while he fell apart. Never asked a bunch of questions. Just knew what he needed.

"Your mama had a real gift," he said.

"Yeah, so everyone keeps telling me."

Tommy gave me this funny look. "You don't see it yet, do you? How you fixed my coffee exactly right without asking how I like it?"

I hadn't even thought about it. Two sugars, splash of milk. How the hell did I know that?

That night I had this dream about Mama when she was young. Walking around these mountain trails with her own mama, learning about plants in the moonlight. Dream-Mama looked right at me and said, "Gift jumps around sometimes. Finds people when they're ready for it. You been ready for years, sweetie. Just too scared to trust yourself."

Woke up with tears all over my pillow and this feeling in my chest like something had clicked into place. Mama was supposed to teach me that summer. The stroke took that away from both of us, left me with half a letter and more questions than answers.

I started paying attention to things I'd been ignoring my whole life. When Tommy came by with tomatoes from his garden, I could feel how lonely he was. Like a weight pressing in my chest. When Mrs. Patterson brought her daughter around, I knew the girl was expecting before she started showing. Old Pete the mail carrier was moving all careful and stiff. Found myself brewing willow bark tea without even thinking about it, meeting him at the mailbox with a steaming cup.

"How'd you know my arthritis was acting up?" he asked, looking at me sideways.

"Lucky guess," I said, even though we both knew better.

Word started getting around the way it does in little towns. Sarah Henderson climbed up here with her baby that wouldn't quit crying. Poor thing looked like death warmed over, dark circles under her eyes from no sleep. I made chamomile and fennel tea, hands just reaching for what they wanted without my brain getting involved. That baby slept six hours straight that night, first time in weeks.

Old Curtis showed up with his bad back. Doctors had him on pills that made him sick to his stomach. I mixed up some kind of salve from plants in Mama's garden. Calendula and comfrey and some other stuff I couldn't have named if you paid me. Week later he came back moving like he was twenty years younger.

"Where'd you learn to do that?" he wanted to know.

"From my mama's hands, I reckon. Even when she couldn't teach me herself."

People kept coming. Climbing that steep path looking for help with whatever was ailing them. I turned into what Mama had been all those years. Keeper of old ways. Bridge between hurting and healing.

Tommy started coming around regular. Helped me figure out Mama's terrible handwriting in those journals, worked in the garden with me. Somewhere between all that planting and talking and learning together, we realized that sometimes healing works better with two people involved. Sometimes the one doing the helping gets helped right back.

One evening we were sitting on the porch watching lightning bugs dance around, and Tommy said, "Funny thing. Came up here to say goodbye to your mama. Wound up saying hello to you instead."

Made my heart do this little flip thing when he said it like that.

By August I knew I wasn't going back to Charlotte. Called my boss and quit right over the phone. She thought I'd completely lost my mind. Maybe I had. Good kind of crazy though.

My college friends kept sending me postcards from their beach trips. Pictures of sand and fruity drinks while I was learning to read the weather in how clouds moved and figure out healing plants by how they felt under my fingers.

September rolled around and I finally got what Mama was trying to tell me in that unfinished letter. Those gifts she wrote about were already mine. Had been mine my whole life. The summer that should've been her last lessons turned into my first real steps toward becoming who I was always meant to be.

That letter's still tucked in the Magic of the Mountains book. Reminds me that some conversations keep going even after the talking stops. Some teaching happens in the spaces between words. On cool September nights when the air smells like woodsmoke and dried herbs, I sit in Mama's old rocking chair and feel her right there with me. In every breeze that moves through the garden she planted.

Tommy and I watch for shooting stars from the front porch, make plans for what we'll plant when spring comes around again. We're keeping the old knowledge alive now. This mountain holds us both the same way it held Mama, same way it'll hold whoever comes after us.

Summer never did turn out like it was supposed to. Turned out exactly like I needed it to, even if I couldn't see that when it started. Some endings are really beginnings wearing a different outfit. Some quiet talks louder than all the noise in the world.

That unfinished letter taught me that finishing comes in all kinds of shapes. Mama never got to write down everything she wanted to tell me, yet she finished the most important part. Passed along gifts that don't live on paper anyway. They live in your hands and your heart and the guts to trust what you already know deep down when the time comes to use it.

Now when people climb up this mountain looking for help, I meet them the same way Mama would have. Hands open, heart ready to listen. The circle keeps turning, never broken, even when words stop mid-sentence. Even when summer ends before it really gets going.