TAKING MY THYME

WOW, March blasted in with a 12 inch snowfall and today it's nearly 60 degrees and the snow cover is vanishing. I came home from my last weekend visit to Salem with some kind of New England crud that immediately went to my chest. I felt it hovering around for the days I spent at Moms but the weather wasn't so great so we ended up sitting in the living room most of the days. Sunday, being nicer, I tried to push a walk...just a little one but it was windy and she feels the cold so much more intensely than I, that I let her turn us around almost immediately. I find it difficult to stay in all day. Most days here at home, I'm outdoors for at least 3 hours and many days are upwards of 6 hours outside either walking the dog, skiing, snowshoeing or even just catching some rays in a chair by the fire pit. When that old tightness in my chest started, I consulted my homemade medicine chest. Back in 2002, I took an Herbal Apprenticeship and learned a lot about different plants both wild and cultivated and I learned how to make teas and tinctures, salves and oils. I chose Thyme...a very good plant for fighting flu and respiratory infection. I began taking it 4 times a day and after only 24 hours, I was aware of a difference in my ability to breathe deeply. I also began having a productive cough rather than a dry irritating one. I had the luxury of time as well because of the fact that I'm still unemployed. I was much quicker to reach for the Drugstore remedies that mask symptoms when I was working. I have been remembering the feeling of being rushed...the pressure of getting to work at a given hour, to be able to accomplish customer service when not feeling well, the polite disgust of customers when you are seized by a sudden attack of coughing. There is something about the way we are conditioned to live and work that honors what we can do for the business we work for...what we are paid to do...that comes at the expense of doing what we most need to do for ourselves. And we do this for our entire lives. It starts with kindergarten where we first beigin to learn that what we want and what we feel is not important if it is not in sync with what the group is doing or with what the teacher says. truly, it's no wonder that some people shrivel up and die when they retire because they have no practice living their life according to their own inner promptings. If they don't have a time clock to punch, they don't know how to structure their day. So for 5 days now, I've been taking my Thyme tincture and whatever was heavy in my chest seems to be gone. My mind keeps playing with the words Time and Thyme...and since saturday nite when we all set our clocks ahead, we have more light if not more time. I realized that taking charge of my own time, and slowing down my pace to accomodate some of the changes aging brings to my body, I have given myself the time to experience the power of Thyme as a healing herbal ally. The rich reward of being unemployed is that I am redefining my relationship with time and my time belongs to me. I have slowed down enough to learn something from taking my Thyme and the medicine spreads to encourage me in my efforts to take my time. I can't describe in words what this feeling is...to lift the plaster of artificial definition and expectation that comes to a small soul at the tender age of 5 with the beginnings of a lifetime of conditioning a person to fit in with the crowd...and the lifetime of the workday world causes that plaster to harden...to become hard, crusty and inflexible. What it feels like to lift off that artificiality is huge...I just can't find words to describe it. So, I'll just keep taking my Thyme...taking my time and know that somehow I will get this pressure off my chest. And with the deep genuine breath of March's soft springlike air, I can begin to feel five again...in my heart of hearts.