The cough. The COUGH. It's getting better but it simply won't go away, and I'm beginning to alarm perfect strangers. It's worst by the end of the day, what with all the talking and umpiring of baseball games and Marine chanting I've been doing (I don't know but I've been told!! / I don't know but I've been told!! / I thought this was just a cold!! / I thought this was just a cold!!) but try as I might, I just can't seem to stop hollering cooing gently at my kids, and I pay for it by nightfall.
Tonight the kids and I dined at a Chinese restaurant with my parents. The coughing, which had been minimal most of the day, escalated rapidly, and by the time our food was delivered I was hacking and choking like a first time smoker. After delivering our five different varieties of stir-fried chicken (we're an imaginative bunch), the waitress returned with a glass full of lukewarm brown liquid -- some type of powerful Chinese tea ("Tea. It's only tea. Nothing else -- just Chinese tea") that she swore would cure anything from a monstrous cough to a severed finger to homesickness.
I examined it. I swirled the glass and sniffed the contents; it smelled earthy but not unduly alarming. I sipped it: earthy but not unduly alarming. I shrugged and drank.
At this point I must commend my mother for her reaction to this scene. She didn't blink, or flinch, or protest my sampling this possibly lethal potion; rather, she maintained a gracious and grateful smile. My conclusion is that she's either become considerably more laid back in recent years, or I'm not on her familial alarm radar because I'm not a grandchild.
I prefer to believe she's mellowing.
Once I'd made my way through about two thirds of the glass's contents, still coughing copiously, the waitress came back with a quart container of tea for me to take home, promising she'd make me more if I needed it. I asked again if it was really just tea and she smiled broadly and declared: "Yes, just tea. It's a mushroom tea -- very beneficial. Make your cough go away."
Mushroom. Tea.
Mushrooms.
I don't like mushrooms. I'm afraid of mushrooms. They're squishy. They're slippery. They grow underground, but they're not yummy potatoes.
They're creepy and they're kooky... mysterious and spooky... they're altogether ooky...
I've never willingly or knowingly consumed a mushroom in any form. In restaurants I always (politely) insist that mushrooms be withheld from my meal, with an implied threat that I might run screaming from the room if I find one.
But. Turning my nose up at the mushroom tea would have been as hurtful as refusing to enjoy the Mother's Day breakfast in bed mushy omelet, and for the same reason: I'm constitutionally unable to deny the hopeful puppy expression that comes with that type of offering.
So I guzzled the tea, thanked the waitress profusely, and toted home my container of mushroom tea. It's sitting on the kitchen counter right now. Looking at me. Daring me.
Eek.
