A Child Who Never Knew His Father

The belief ran through the hollers long before I ever heard Grandma speak on it — that a child born after his father's death carried a gift for curing thrush, and only that child. Grandma was not one of those healers, and she was not shy about her opinion of them. Her trouble was never with the belief itself. It was that a thrush healer worked in words alone — no herbs, no wash, nothing done to the body at all. Just the charm, spoken and left to do its own work.

How Word Reached Her

We did not do much house visiting in the regular way. People would come to report when a baby in the family had taken sick, and if Grandma could help, she went. Most times we walked — there was rarely a reason not to, and thrush in a nursing baby was one of the things folks came looking for her over most often.

Treating a Baby's Thrush

1. I

   Hearing the Report

   A mother would come with word that the baby would not nurse right, mouth gone white and sore. Grandma listened, then went — usually on foot, usually the same day.

2. II

   Making the Wash

   She mixed one teaspoon of raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar into one cup of warm water.

3. III

   Speaking the Blessing

   While swabbing the baby's mouth with the diluted vinegar, she spoke the words three times over:

   "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I blow this thrush away. Out with the heat, out with the white, let this mouth be clean and bright."

4. IV

   Leaving the Cure Behind

   She left the same solution with the mother, with instruction to swab the baby's mouth with it once or twice a day.

5. V

   For Nursing Mothers

   If the baby was still nursing, she instructed the mother to use the same solution on her own nipples, so the thrush would not simply pass back and forth between them.

What She Taught Me About the Gift

Grandma never explained the belief so much as she lived inside of it. She healed what we would now call a yeast infection, decades before anyone in the hollers had that word for it — and she was not far off treating it, at that. But the vinegar was only half of what she carried into a sick room. The other half was the word, spoken with the same faith every time.

• The old belief held that a thrush healer had to be a child who never knew his father — a title Grandma never claimed and never sought
• She had little patience for a cure worked in words alone, with no herbs or wash behind it
• The vinegar did the physical work; the blessing carried the faith behind it
• She left the cure in the mother's hands too, not just her own, so the care could continue after she was gone from the house
• Old knowledge and living faith were never at odds in her — medicine and the Word worked side by side

I have thought on it a long time — that some in the hollers believed a cure had to come from a child who never asked for it, born into a gift before he ever had the chance to earn it. Grandma believed something plainer. That the Lord gave us herbs and hands to use them, and words to carry alongside the using. She never needed a title to do the work. Just the vinegar, and enough faith to say the words over it.