My grandparents’ house was an oven of retained heat from the earlier sunny afternoon.  Both aging into their eighties, the house and my grandparents soaked up the heat into their brittle bones to warm their thinning skin and frailer bodies.  In consideration to my six month old son and I, a window unit air conditioner was shoved into a living room window but it was not up to the task of driving out the heavy, heated air.  It only added noise to the symphony of my son’s angry wails in the inky darkness.  Sleep that night would be hard won.

Following our normal sleep routines, his travel crib was set up in a corner of the living room.  Tucked away for minimum disruption, my son made it clear that night everything in his world was disrupted and he was confused and angry. This was his first visit to my grandparents home, in my hometown in Michigan.  The house itself had been built and rebuilt countless times by my grandfather, none of them to any code or specification.  This was my first home, where my mom and I lived as she navigated her reality of single motherhood during a time when it was still judged harshly.  I hoped my son would also find this house to be a loving place of joy, but this night was proving to be a sweaty battle for sleep and peace.

Scooping him out of his crib, I stripped him out of his pajamas down to his diaper.  As the oldest daughter of her family, my grandmother knew too well how easily and quickly children could become ill.  By age 13, she quit school to help her family by working and raising her younger siblings.  No one knows more about raising babies than Grandma Georgina and she rushed to the kitchen as I continued to calm the baby down in my bed.  As I am singing and cooing to him on the bed, she returns to the bedroom with an egg and a bowl in hand.

Devoutly Catholic, her bedroom is filled with pictures of La Virgen de Guadlupe, Jesus, Saints, candles and rosary beads.  Faithfully attending church every week and believing with her entire heart and soul, Grandma knows her place in heaven is secure from her belief in a Catholic God.  That night, a more ancient practice of faith sprang from her lips.  Her voice drifts into the black, hot room.  A Spanish prayer of healing, while she simultaneously rubs the egg from head to toe over my son’s body.  Once her prayer is finished she cracks the egg in the bowl and places it under the bed. For good measure, Grandma also blesses my son with the holy water she keeps on hand.  

Finally, my son falls asleep.  The night is quiet and still.  Once we are sure he is sleeping soundly, I ask Grandma about the egg ritual and prayers.  Despite me knowing my son was just hot and angry, Grandma was afraid he had a fever or real illness.  With my son sleeping between us in her bed, she tells me in a loud whisper “I learned this prayer from my grandmother, who was a midwife”.  

Long before childbirth and medical access became the sole province of Western Medicine and men, healing and welcoming children were a matrilineal art passed down through generations of healers.  Prior to her childhood ending prematurely, Grandma Georgina enjoyed a close relationship with her grandmother and learned some of her native Mexican healing prayers.  The egg was used to draw out any fever and illness from the afflicted and allow them to rest.  Whether it was the egg, the prayer, the coolness of the holy water, or sheer exhaustion, my son sleeps throughout the night.

To paraphrase Irvin Yalom, if we die when we are buried and the last time someone says our name, how extraordinary to evoke a woman from five generations past that evening.  A woman educated in the healing arts, who ushered life into the world.  Who lived during a time when no recorded histories were taken, except the fragile pieces of love etched in my grandmother’s memories.  A love strong enough to reach across an ocean of time to heal a great-great-great-great grandson and bring him peaceful respite. 

Grandma Georgina is now nearing 90 years old and her memory is failing her.  The old brittle house is emptier, without my grandfather to share it with her.  He has crossed the first threshold of death.  Dementia is a cruel and curious disease.   If only an ancient prayer of our ancestors could heal her or calm her worried mind when she is agitated.  The love she poured into her family is now holding her close in love as she continues to lose sense of time and place.  That is the real magic and power of all prayers, Catholic or indigenous healing traditions alike.  They are rooted in love, the most healing force on heaven and earth.