Home remedies

It’s raining again.

The air is thick and still.

Black dots float across the sky as I walk home from work.

They have been swarming and biting for days.

The stagnant air, coupled with the soaking rains of the past few weeks, has caused their numbers to explode.

I feel a subtle stab and automatically lift my hand to the part of my neck where the sensation emanated. My index finger senses an intruder; a tiny, soft tuft that wasn’t there before … at least not that morning, when I slathered the manufacturer-prescribed amount of SPF moisturizer over my shower-dampened skin. When I looked down, I found a smudge of blood.

It will itch for a moment, and I won’t think of it again.

The mosquitoes, I muse, probably think I am fierce.

Or many just a big dumb oaf who lost a necessary fear of the slender pest amid non-stop news coverage of its more hard-bodied, disease-vector compatriot, the tick.

I don’t even have time to laugh at my own joke when a swarm of the thread-legged flies hone in on me and have at it. I understand they might be attracted to my scent, or my blood type, or even the amount of carbon dioxide my lungs pump into each exhalation as I run towards shelter.

I know it’s the female of the species that torments me. Her mate feasts not on necks but on nectar and pollen. She needs my blood to sustain her offspring.

When I outrun the swarm, I feel a rush of bygone adrenaline.

A recollected story about a deadly case of encephalitis, and then a watery memory of our town’s municipal truck fogging the neighborhoods with insecticide. My mother kept us inside, explaining she would not repeat the errors of her generation when children were allowed to chase the trucks and play in their mist.

Back then, my mosquito bites would balloon to fist-sized welts on my arms, legs, and back that would itch for days. In the palm of her hand, my mother would mix a few shakes of an ancient bottle of meat tenderizing powder with a couple of drops of warm water, and grind the poultice she created into the welts.

Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, or the scratching of the tenderizer’s residue that satisfied the itch, but it always worked like magic.

She claimed the secret was “papaya,” and thrust the bottle at me, with her finger at the place on the label where it listed the ingredient, and explained to me that she had purposely saved this particular package for medical purposes because the tenderizer company had since changed its formula and the effect, according to my mother, had been seriously diminished.

I believe that she believed.

I wanted to believe it, too.

As I matured, I began to wonder if all mothers had labored over similar mythical balms. My husband’s mother swore by the juice of red berries, picked fresh from the weed bushes in her yard and squished liberally into any spots of bother.

This salve, she said, worked well for insect bites befalling visiting grandchildren, especially if the stain survived bathtime and lasted until morning through an otherwise restful sleep.

Of course, I played along, but didn’t truly believe it. Prevention aside, what other alternative was there? Scanning the packages of dry rubs at our modern grocery produced none with the “magic” ingredient.

Might as well sing a happy little song in the rain: Deet. De-deedee deet de-de-de Deet Deet Deet de-Deet, Duh. ... and take a scroll through through the department of health's news releases.