We all want Mom when we are sick

Touch wood. I’ve not been sick this winter — yet. Some kind of bug traditionally visits around my January birthday, so I usually start bracing myself and doubling up on the hand-washing just after the new year.

Given the number of times one sees men sail out of public restrooms without a moment’s pause at the sink to wash, it seems one can never wash enough to make up for the rest of humanity.

I happily find myself shaking hands with numerous people repeatedly most Sunday mornings without any problem. Ninety, 100 handshakes: unscathed. A single minute in the same room with a 6-year-old: violent illness.

Children seem to bring new strains of sickness into the world with them. When my own kids were small, they were like walking petri dishes of germs once they started in school.

At a recent meeting, a fellow with two young children at home arrived looking miserable with the same cold he’d been battling for weeks. The whole sniffling misery had been capped with a case of pinkeye, just for good measure. The rest of us scooted our chairs back and gave him plenty of space.

Another thing about winter illnesses: We want our moms to take care of us, no matter how old we may be or even how long ago Mom may have left us. It must be a hard-wired thing in our brains. We get really sick, and we’re looking around for Mom to bring the … what?

That’s a question I like to ask people: What did your mother bring you when you were sick? What was the thing she imbued with just the right magic you came to believe in for the rest of your life?

Because in hearing the answers to this question, it’s always clear that whatever Mom brought us when we were 10 and in bed with a fever is what we will want in the same scenario at age 40.

I’ve picked up all sorts of family secret elixirs in talking to people over the years. It’s something they actually love to talk about because of the warm association with being looked after. Some of them make no sense at all in terms of actually helping, but most of them have a common thread: some combination of broth, carbohydrates and fizz.

My own mother had the instinctual knowledge of the need to stay hydrated and started bringing cups of room-temperature 7UP soda even when the likelihood of it staying in my stomach was slim.

There followed plain toast, then, if all was well, some Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and maybe a grilled cheese sandwich. A bad cold or respiratory flu brought about a similar course of treatment. So those are the things I want today when I’m sick, more than 20 years after Mom’s passing.

I’ve also heard people report canned tomato soup and ginger ale as the magic combination. Others had moms who would concoct their own homemade soup or broth.

I’m surprised how often Chinese restaurant soups show up on your lists of sickness remedies. My own daughters would probably point to them as their own flu remedy menu. As often as not, they asked for takeout chicken broth from a Chinese restaurant, even as pre-schoolers. When that wasn’t the case, they got the usual toast, crackers and ginger ale.

Some of the flu strains this year seem pretty severe. I got a note from a severely sick friend over the holidays who said she now understands how so many people die of influenza every year.

Stay inside, read a good book and scrub those hands.