My Grandmother's Healing Touch- Noris Binet

How can anyone explain the healing touch from the hands of a grandmother--a touch that energized every fiber of your body transforming you in ways that will continue to support your entire life? That was the touch I received from my grandmother when I was just a youngster.

When in the middle of the night a child suffers from a high fever in the countryside of an island nation, where there is no doctor or nurse available, there is only one resource that can work when urgently needed and on time.  I remember that evening my mother had been trying all kinds of remedies to stem my high fever, but nothing worked. I have a memory of laying down on my bed and hearing soft murmurs around me, people passing close to my bed, stopping putting their hand on my body and saying the words “No, it has not come down,” then my mother putting the thermometer in my mouth. My body was on fire and the discomfort I felt made me groan frequently. 

Without my mother’s remedies being able to break the fever, I suppose it was then that my grandmother was summoned from her house only a five minute walk away at her age, but only 30 seconds for me when I was running around like a wild cat.

At first I didn’t know that it was Mama Carmela, my grandmother, touching me.  What I do recall was the softest touch that you can imagine as she took my naked body and caressed it from top to button and bathed it with a soothing and comforting touch,  transporting me to a place of feeling profoundly cared for. I don’t recall hearing her voice but I sensed her speaking to me deeply in a way I had not experienced before. 

She applied an unguento ointment that cooled my body, and calmed the fire within, allowing me to breathe more openly while relaxing my whole system. I felt completely embraced in her love. She was going up and down through my chest and all the way to my feet. It was a warm embrace where my whole body was enveloped within a love that has not name and it couldn’t be put into words either, it was beyond words.

Mama Carmela was a woman of strong character; she was straightforward and ruled her household with great order and efficiency. Even as strict as she appeared, she never screamed or even raised her voice that I can recall. I always knew what to expect from her in her clear and direct way, which, as I look back upon now, realize that I deeply appreciated because I knew exactly how to behave in her presence, and I was often punished for my behavior in my own home, where the rules seemed vague and capricious. 

She took a daily nap sitting in her rocking chair in the dining room in front of a window facing the pathway to her mother’s house, my great grandmother, Mama Toni. Our houses were in separate compounds next to each other, so for me to be able to go to Mama Toni’s house I had to pass through my grandmother’s compound. Very often, exactly at the time Mama Carmela was having her afternoon siesta, my siblings and I would try and sneak across her compound to play with some of our cousins. We would squat down so that she couldn’t see us through the window, but usually before we could pass by, her voice would come out from the house with the typical question: Quien va? (Who’s there?). No one would answer! Again the question, Quien va? At this point we learned to answer and she would say “come here” and would give us each a piece of candy and send us home with her rebuke that siesta is not the time to be visiting anyone’s home or for children to be running around disturbing the quiet. And that was that!  Today we laugh at her ways and rejoice that we had such a precious grandmother. 

Mama Carmela possessed a natural elegance in how she walked, moved, dressed and behaved.  Her weekly trip into town to have her hair and nails done was a sacred duty, and her place in the world was well-defined. As a country woman she was rooted in the rhythm of nature and she was bound by her family obligations. Her life seemed to be as natural as life itself, from the leaves she cut from the orange tree for her evening tea, to her rising from sleep with the morning sun and enjoying her home-grown, freshly ground coffee. An interwoven relationship existed in her home between human, animal and plant life, where cats ran around looking for food and chickens crossed into her living room looking to expand their day by walking on the cool, colorful, Italian mosaic floor of her house. The surrounding porch of her home was adorned with beautiful, ornamental plants and multi-colored flowers. All together the setting displayed a rich, harmonious environment, where everything and everyone seemed to thrive.

I am not sure how long Mama Carmela’s massage of my body lasted. Was it a few minutes, an hour, or perhaps the whole night? Everything felt blurred and fuzzy and I began to feel lighter as if I had been emptied out of whatever had happened to me. Through my grandmother’s healing touch the fever dissolved gradually throughout the night as the vapor emanating from the ointment penetrated my pores and brought cooling relief.

As the new day broke onto the horizon my wellbeing returned and I woke up fully alive and restored.  After that night Mama Carmela was no longer just my grandmother, but now I looked upon her with a sense of awe and wonder with her magical capacity to touch lives in restorative and transforming ways. She became greater than my own mother possessing mysterious qualities that elevated her to the rank of the archetypal Great Mother.

Over the past forty years, as I have traveled back and forth to my island home, I have witnessed how the aging process produced deeper and deeper wisdom and grace in my grandmother.  She relaxed her strict character of earlier years, laughed at the nonsense of the pretensions around her and passed on to me simple teachings that were direct and clear.  A profound communion developed between us as we shared from our mutual stores of gained wisdom hers by a deep connection with her place, from which she never moved, and mine from experiences of new cultures, exotic environments and world travels.

  

Once, after a shamanic ceremony which I led for Mama Carmela and her sister, my great Aunty Titatina, I was humbly astonished that they referred to me as a sister. During the ritual a triangle of energy was created between us that profoundly deepened our spiritual bond and connected us at a level that would never be broken. For the last ten years before my grandmother died she appeared to me repeatedly in dreams preparing me for her death, energetically transmitting to me more and more of her wisdom, and she became my  Zen master. Finally at the age of 101, and at the end seeming to me very much like a sweet, precious bird, she naturally left this world, and fell asleep exactly as she had learned to live, directly and faithfully obeying the movement of life, with neither fuss nor argument.

  

Last night she came back to me; her presence so powerful that I was infused with an awareness of the archetypal Great Mother with her radiant power to foster transformation and rebirth.  I awoke calling her name, Mama Carmela, Mama Carmela, Mama Carmela… remembering her healing touch!

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