I recently asked residents at Fleischman, men and women, many of advanced age, to travel back in time. I also included family, volunteers, and staff.

I asked, “When you were a child and had a cold, what do you remember about being cared for?” The invitation to summon childhood memories became a sweet experience for them, and for me.

Suddenly, they were children again. Some recalled Mentholatum (Vicks) rubbed into little chests. Cups of Red Rose tea with lemon and honey. One fondly remembered her German grandmother who helped her get well with chamomile steam, head over the bowl and under a towel tent, breathing in healing and heat. Orange-flavored St. Joseph’s baby aspirin, Chericol cough syrup dispensed from sticky handled spoons. Glasses of Vernors and Coca Cola, then being tenderly tucked into bed. Often an older sibling or grandparent took on the role of the parent.

“Lots of blankets,” Marvin called out.

“They forced me to wear a Baboushka!” said Ruthe. “We had to keep our ears covered.”

Soup… always the soup. Chicken soup with the feet. “Lochshun mit yoach,” Dr. Charley Silow remembered his mother’s noodle soup. So many recalled matzo balls and broth so rich it felt medicinal. One man remembered being isolated from his siblings. “I stayed in my room so nobody else would catch it.”

I remember my own feelings of isolation during childhood illnesses. I especially remember my childhood book of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, and in particular: “The Land of Counterpane.”

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

Rene wistfully smiled, “My mother would hold the Kleenex when I needed to blow my nose.” Others remembered glasses of Schnapps or whiskey with honey and hot buttered rum for a cough.

Sandy recalled a concoction called guggle muggle (raw egg, sugar, and milk whisked together). “It sounds terrible now,” she laughed. “But we drank it whenever we were sick.” Doreen remembered a version of that too. And Debby recalled being served red Jell-O in bowls in bed. Euni smiled talking about having precious time with her mother and being read to on the couch. One resident was homeschooled at the kitchen table until well enough to return. Marilyn recalled the dreaded visit to Dr. Birnbaum if she were too ill to go to school.

A woman whose family heritage was Polish remembered hot tea stirred with raspberry jam to “sweat it out,” plus raw garlic mashed on rye bread. “You could smell it in the house for days,” she laughed. “But it cleared everything.”

Another swore by onion syrup made from thinly sliced onions layered with sugar, left in a bowl until they became cough medicine. “Terrible,” she said. “And we took it anyway.”

One woman remembered her Russian born Bubbie, who insisted she drink garlic in warm milk before bed. It worked to heal her every time.

This was a generation raised on resilience. Work still had to be done. Families still had to run. A cold was inconvenient, but not an identity. And yet, tucked inside the toughness was tenderness. A mother at the edge of the bed. A warm cup of tea pressed into small hands. Someone smoothing blankets. Someone reading aloud. Someone caring.

Now the once-small children live and work together in community. We notice when someone coughs. A tissue appears. “Do you want tea?” “I have honey in my apartment.” “Would you like me to sit with you?”

Care is everywhere… in all of us.

Across decades and continents, medicinal remedies and treatments change. But the memories of parental care remain. That may be the real cure we carry all our lives.

May we continue to be blessed with refuah shlemah… healing that comes not only from medicine, but from memory, from love, from the quiet act of showing up. And may we never forget how to tend to one another.

Shabbat Shalom