Healing Starts at Home

I can’t go to my native Alabama to get well, but I can do the next best thing.

By Mary Daily

Native Americans believe that when you’re sick, you need to return to your “native air,” the place from which you came, for healing. I am a long way from the air I breathed as a child. I grew up in North Alabama, but have lived in Southern California for more than 40 years.

So when I had a recent health scare caused by an adverse drug reaction during the Covid-19 pandemic, I couldn’t go back to my native air, even if I wanted to. Yet I found myself doing the next best thing.

I lay in my bed between sheets from Red Land Cotton Co., which are made from fiber that grows in the fields just 40 miles from my hometown. I have visited their gin, talked with the third-generation owner, and heard how the linens are made. When I lie between those sheets and rest my head on the pillowcase, I feel embraced by my native air and by all the people I have loved from that red land.

On top of the sheets is a patchwork quilt made of squares joined by rose-colored strips. The quilt was a handmade gift to my parents about a decade before I was born from church ladies when my minister father left their congregation to move on to another. Each maker embroidered her name on her square. I have always pulled out that quilt when I’m sick. I spread it over me and know that Pearl Bostic, Elsie Hawkins, Goldie Logan, and all the others, whom I never knew, are caring for me.

And then there’s native food. In Los Angeles, I hardly ever find young, tender okra for boiling. Most eaters on this side of the country would find boiled okra repulsive, so growers sell it big and husky for frying. But when I recently spotted small pods at the farmers market, I knew what to do with them. I cooked baby lima beans with a couple of pieces of bacon and lay the okra on top to soften. True Alabama comfort food just like my mother made. I baked coarse Southern cornbread and soaked wedges of it in the bean broth. No chemical prescription could be more therapeutic.

How can I not get better? I’ve had excellent care from a UCLA specialist and her remarkable team. They have been caring, attentive, and kind. But that’s only part of the wellness equation. The doctor and her nurses are my partners in my recovery, but so are the things I can taste and touch from my native land. I have called upon them all to nurture and, yes, to heal. I do feel better.

photo by Kazuend

Mary Daily is a journalist in Los Angeles.