HEALER'S ART

It is summertime and I am in the kitchen of a big, old frame house. A middle-aged Chicano woman is in the kitchen with me and we are talking about my grandmother and her failing capacities. I tell her about Alzheimer's disease and the confusion she is experiencing. The woman says she can heal this infirmity. She goes over and gets a compress of steaming herbs and places one portion below my navel. She then raises her arms and moves them across my body, blessing me, chanting in a strange tongue as she does so. I look at her and the room begins to vibrate from the force of her power. I am shaken by the experience and stand there wondering how to continue when my friend J. comes in dressed in a long skirt and I tell her the woman is healing with the teas. She says, yes, that is how it is done and I say that the strange thing is that she is healing my grandmother by applying the herbs to me. I awoke and could feel the force of the dream.