COMMUNITY
The Medicine of Transmission
Broadleaf Plantain and a Father’s Love
I could not have been more than nine or possibly ten because I was sitting on one of the rope swings in the backyard of the house I grew up in. The swing set had two rope swings hanging from a very sturdy painted green metal structure. The ropes were thick, the fibers on them prickly and scratchy, until warmed up and moist from the sweat of my hands. The rope swings had hand-made wooden seats with little indents sawed into the places on either side where they rested within the curve of the rope. The swings made a sound, each one a unique creak and whistle as it went back and forth. There were pushes and “under pushes.” An under push was when the person pushing would run under the swing with you on it. When the under-push was really good, you could jump off the swing with the push and fly through the air across the lawn, landing safely on the small hill covered with thick grass rolling down from my father’s tended and vibrant vegetable garden.
Next to the swing set was a seesaw or large wooden teeter-totter which had been handcrafted by my great-uncle Tony who owned the house before my parents. That is what we called it. The teeter-totter. Wanna teeter? We would say to one another. Lots of kids could fit on that teeter. And it was a favorite place for group photos, lots of kids lined up along both sides of the teeter so that it balanced, looking at the camera. I still have a picture of one of my childhood birthday parties, near Halloween, all my classmates in costume, lined up and smiling on the teeter-totter. After being made fun of at school, I tried to call it a seesaw, but always reverted back to teeter when I got home. The seesaws were the small ones at school. This one was a teeter-totter. It was painted porch railing green. And it also had particular sounds, the most upsetting when the “bump” given by the person on the bottom was too hard and the person on top flipped off their end. Missing teeth, gashed chins, and “pancakes” to sting your butt hard by the person on the other end of the teeter, slyly slapping their end with their own butt — the backyard was at times a dangerous place for sure.
I’d had a wart on my index finger right below the fingernail for a long time. It bothered me as I was constantly banging it by accident. We tried various remedies from the store to no avail. And so it was that one day my father approached me while I was on one of the swings. There was a crowd of kids in the yard which wasn’t unique since I was one of six and there were always neighborhood kids over. “Theresa,” he said, “listen to me. I am going to cure your wart but you have to promise to do as I say or it won’t work.”
I felt a bit intimidated by this approach and had no idea what he was planning but I loved him beyond intensely and so agreed. I followed him around our yard as he bent down with a small trowel and began digging up what looked like dandelions but slightly different. He would dig one up then say, “No, not that one,” or “That’s not good,” until he felt confident he had identified a healthy and correct plant by its corresponding green leaves. Then he took the leaves into the house, crushed them up, and came back outside with them in a bowl and a box of Band-Aids. At the picnic table, he took some of the crushed up green leaves, squeezed their juice onto my wart, then put a large pile of them on top of my wart, covering it. He then placed a Band-Aid over that so that it stood tall with the plant material underneath it. He wrapped several more Band-Aids around the tip of my finger so that it would stay. He then directed me to leave it there and not remove it until he said so.
This was my first experience with plants as direct healing remedies. My father’s family were immigrants from the small village of Torre de’ Passeri in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Bowls of cooked bitter greens were common items on the dinner table. The adults adored them and ate them in rapture. As a child, I did not like them. They were too bitter for me. Now I cannot get enough of them.
Relatives from the neighborhood were always out picking the dandelions and probably other wild greens that I didn’t even know about before the lawns were mowed.
It was not unusual for me to see my father being in relationships with plants, as his garden was something of a miracle every summer as well as his parents and all the neighbors in their immigrant neighborhood. They would compete on the best tomatoes. But to work with a plant like this I had not yet seen. I did know however that he was pulling on something I had heard tell of: the lineage of his grandmother, his Nona. He said he remembered seeing her do this. He also told stories of seeing her set broken bones, and work with other herbs. When someone showed up with a toothache, she told them to close their eyes and suck on the clove she had just given them while she acquired some pigeon dung from the window ledge for the remedy she would later insert into their mouth. As she did this, she looked at my father who was watching her, and covered her lips with her finger to make sure he would keep her secret.
He saw my great-grandmother, a Strega in her village of Torre de’ Passeri, doctor the Italian immigrant population in their new home in New Hampshire. She delivered most of the babies too as Streghe were midwives and healers. So when he put this pile of weeds on my finger, I trusted him and respected his earnestness in trying to remember what to do and how to do it. I think he may have even spoken her name aloud, “Domenica, you let me know if I am not getting this right,” pushing his black horned rimmed glasses up on his nose. This was the early 70s in New Hampshire. We were not wealthy. We were not hippies either. This was not some “back to the earth” thing. This was something from his Italian lineage, and the Old World. I knew what it was because that lineage permeated every bone of my life and body. We grew up immersed inside this reality of Italian-speaking elders, weird and exotic foods, a thick and constant cloud of loss, melancholy, reminiscing, remembering, and news of relatives across the water.
Immigrants leave a lot behind. So much. We were lucky. It was not forced or forcible, it was voluntary. We could and can reach back, but there is grief nonetheless. Grief for what is left behind: family, the land, the traditions, the smells, and the plants. We continue forward. Recreating ourselves. But there has been a sacrifice, a cost.
My great-grandmother suffered isolation, feeling irrelevant, being replaced by modernity. And the climate was horrendous for her. My great-grandfather offered his life building railroad tracks and chopping away at hard granite in the quarries.
I kept the Band-Aid with weeds on my finger as he said. It was there for a long time. It rotted and began to smell like rotten vegetables but I did not move it. I daresay he may have changed the bandage and replaced the weed a few times, but I honestly don’t remember. I do remember leaving it and doing what he said in spite of the cajoling and teasing of my siblings. My God, I realize now I probably wore this contraption to school. As I said, I loved him beyond intensely. I still love my father deeply but this love, the love of a young girl enamored with her dad is something special, something different; before the critical eyes come in and see the humanness, the flaws. I trusted him completely and I felt something in this reaching, this endeavoring to heal me with a remedy he had witnessed that was now lost.
My great-grandmother died when he was but six years old. No one carried on the lineage. He remembered her. He watched her. And he watched it disappear.
There was a signature in this exchange with him, like many others, that stood out to me even as a child and affected my whole life’s trajectory. “Give me that, I will fix it,” and pulling out of his memory a remedy or performing a ritual he watched as a child and getting mixed results. But the energy in those signature moments — the palpable feeling of the presence of the ancestors, the presence of the medicine, the presence of his heart wanting to remember, to keep alive, honoring in this way — is something I will keep inside me forever. These were palpable moments of transmission. Even though the lineage was broken, forgotten, the remedies often botched up, it was the transmission nevertheless. I could feel it, the magic, the healing moment, the understanding that my wart needed to be dried out, needed an astringent. Though he could not give language to it, he knew what was needed and where to get it and how to set it and that it was important to model it.
Though never an herbalist, my father carried the lineage within him, channeling it into his place in the community — as one to come to, to confide in, ask for advice. He carries his ancestral legacy by working in his garden religiously, making his wine with his father’s press and barrels, continuing on the traditional meals at holidays, homemade pasta, homemade ravioli, pesto, tomato sauce every Sunday. All of this I carry alongside him within me. Because children feel intention. Children feel longing and trying and children absorb these and carry them inside. And it is enough.
When it was finally time to remove the bandage, the wart was indeed completely dried out. After a week in the air, the scab of it fell off and exposed the vulnerable skin of my finger underneath, reborn with this ritual. It never came back. Years later I came to identify the plant as broadleaf plantain. Broadleaf plantain and the endeavoring of the son of immigrants to honor, to remember, and to pass on. Yes, Dad, I caught it.
My life is truly blessed.
©Theresa C. Dintino 2021
