The herbs, tightly enclosed in a plastic bag then folded inside a brown paper bag, still manage to permeate the house with their earthy, overwhelming aroma. I store them in the laundry room off the kitchen, and when I open the pantry door, the odor always makes my nose twitch, however much I anticipate it.
The herbs themselves are an interesting assortment of twigs; flat, brown things; a rind of something. One time I thought I saw the dried carapace of a bug. They are mushroom-like in color, uniformly brown and beige. Their smell is at once sweet and musty, and lingering, like something dead. I've often described them as "road kill in a bag."
We get the herbs from our Chinese doctor, Joy Jin, a tiny, middle-aged woman who speaks passable English and, like all Chinese doctors, is prone to blunt pronouncements that somehow don't offend. When I first began brewing the teas in the hope of stopping some of my daughter's seizures, I was worried that I might do her some sort of harm. Dr. Jin assured me that the teas were "dangerous for you, not for Sophie."
This was in keeping with a friend's experience with a different Chinese doctor. That wise woman had continuously admonished my friend against an earlier brain surgery done on her own epileptic infant daughter. "Why you cut open her brain? That's terrible," she said, every time my friend brought her daughter for a visit.
The surgery had been unsuccessful, and my friend regretted it to a sickening degree. However, the criticism was so blunt and honest that it was hysterical to us.
Neurologists, on the other hand, have great difficulty voicing their opinions, especially when they don't know what in the world is going on with their patients' brains. That had been our experience, anyway.
I dutifully reported to Sophie's neurologist that I was taking her to a Chinese doctor and giving her herbal teas. Dr. T., a comfortingly disheveled doctor whom I had chosen to follow my daughter's progress after a long string of arrogant, best-in-the-field physicians, commented in her gentle British accent, "Well, they couldn't possibly be any more dangerous than the stuff we've been forcing down her throat for six years."
Chinese herbs are brewed twice. The first time, I open the bag into a nonmetallic pot and cover the mixture with water. Dust and pollen-like fragments float to the surface; I push them down with a wooden spoon and turn on the gas.
