Ad copy

My mother told the same story three times in an hour last May, and two Mennonite women let her tell it every time. My name is Emily. I am thirty-nine years old. I teach art at the elementary school two towns over from where I grew up. My husband and I live about twenty minutes from my mother's house. My mother's name is Helen. She is seventy-two. She was a high school English teacher for thirty-eight years. My father died six years ago. She lives alone in the house I grew up in. I want to tell you about a Saturday morning last May at Ruth Zimmerman's farm in the Shenandoah Valley, because it is when I finally understood something I had been quietly watching for three years. My mother has a friend named Ruth Zimmerman. They met in 1983 at a summer teacher's course at a state college. My mother was thirty-one. Ruth was thirty-three. They shared a table at lunch on the first day of the course and they wrote each other letters for forty years after that. Ruth is Mennonite. She and her husband run a small farm about two counties west of us in the Shenandoah Valley. They have six grown children and I have lost count of how many grandchildren. Every spring Ruth hosts a seedling exchange at her farm. Women from her community come with trays of tomatoes and peppers and squash and cucumbers they have started in their greenhouses, and they trade with each other. My mother has been going to Ruth's spring seedling exchange for almost twenty years. This year my mother called me and asked if I would drive her. She has always driven herself. I said yes and I did not say a word about the asking. We drove out on a Saturday in mid-May. I want to tell you what I had been noticing about my mother for the three years before that drive. Nothing dramatic. Just — small things. She had started reaching for words. Common words. The kind of words a woman who had taught high school English for thirty-eight years should not have to reach for. She had started keeping a small notepad on the kitchen counter next to the phone. She wrote down anything she was afraid she would forget. She had put a novel on her nightstand two years ago and she was still on chapter four. She had told me the same story about a former student twice at two different Sunday dinners, three weeks apart. She did not know she had told me the story twice. My father had been the one who read to her at night in his last years. She stopped doing much reading after he died. I had assumed that was grief. I don't think it was only grief. We got to Ruth's farm around ten in the morning. There were maybe a dozen women in the yard behind the farmhouse. Long tables set up with trays and trays of seedlings. Coffee and coffee cake on the porch. Ruth met us at the driveway. She hugged my mother for a long time. She hugged me and asked about my husband and my son. She told my mother she had saved her the Cherokee Purple tomato starts she asked about in a letter three months ago. My mother said, "Ruth, I don't remember asking about them." Ruth said, "Well, I remember." We went out to the yard. I sat on a wooden bench at the edge of the garden while my mother went with Ruth to look at seedlings. There were four other women at Ruth's table by the time I sat down. A woman about Ruth's age named Miriam who was, I would find out later, Ruth's cousin. Two younger women in their forties. And an older woman in her eighties, small and quiet, who was Miriam's mother. My mother settled in at the table. I watched from the bench. The women were talking about a recipe for chow-chow — the pickled relish that people in that part of the country make in the summer. Miriam had brought a jar and was passing it around and the women were talking about their own family recipes. My mother started telling a story about her own mother's chow-chow, from when my mother was a girl. It was a good story. About seven or eight minutes long. My mother had told me the story a couple of times in my life. I could tell you the ending. The women at the table listened. Ruth listened. Miriam listened. The two younger women listened. Miriam's mother listened. When my mother finished, Ruth said, "Helen, that reminds me of the summer my Aunt Naomi tried to teach my sister to put up cucumbers. I don't think I've ever told you that one." Ruth started telling her own story. Four minutes later my mother said, "Ruth, that reminds me of a story about my own mother's chow-chow, from when I was a girl." She told the same story. The same seven or eight minutes. The same ending. Ruth listened all the way through. Miriam listened. The two younger women listened. Miriam's mother listened. When my mother finished the second time, Miriam said, "Helen, I always did want to know what your mother used for the sweetness. My mother used molasses and I never was sure that was right." My mother said, "Well, Miriam, funny you should say that, because my mother's chow-chow story starts with what she used for the sweetness." She told the story a third time. The same seven or eight minutes. The same ending. I want to tell you what Ruth did. She listened. Miriam listened. The two younger women listened. Miriam's mother, the old woman, listened. Nobody at that table let on that they had heard the story before. Nobody finished a sentence for my mother. Nobody looked at another woman with a knowing look. Nobody made my mother feel, for one single second, that she was doing anything but telling them a story they were glad to hear. When my mother finished the third time, Miriam turned to her very quietly and said, "Helen, would you come with me to the sorting table and help me sort these tomato seedlings by size? I need a second set of eyes on them." My mother said, "Of course." She got up. She went with Miriam to the sorting table. She and Miriam sorted seedlings for the next forty minutes. Sorting seedlings by size is a task that does not need a story-thread. Her hands knew it. Ruth watched my mother walk over to the sorting table with Miriam. Then Ruth turned to me on the bench. She said, "Emily. Would you come with me to the shed for a minute? I have something I want to show you." I said, "Alright." We walked across the yard to a small wooden shed behind the greenhouse. Ruth opened the door. Inside were shelves of gardening tools and small burlap sacks of seeds and old glass jars. Ruth did not show me anything. She stood in the doorway of the shed with me and she said, "Emily, how long has your mother been telling the same story more than once?" I said, "About three years, Ruth." She said, "Does she know?" I said, "I don't think she knows." She said, "Has she been to her doctor?" I said, "Yes. Every year. Her bloodwork is fine. Her doctor says she is doing well for a woman her age and to come back next year." Ruth nodded. She said, "Emily, my own mother started slipping around Helen's age. She is ninety-six now. She lives in a care home in the next town over — she moved there three years ago after twelve years of my caring for her at home. I did what a daughter does. I read everything I could find. I tried to understand what was helping and what wasn't helping." She said, "I want to tell you about one thing I added to my mother's routine in the last four years I had her at home. And I want to be very careful about how I say it, because I am not going to promise you anything, and I do not want you to walk away from this shed thinking I have." Ruth said, "I read about a growing body of research on molecular hydrogen and cellular wellness. About twenty years of studies. Not new. Not a fad." "It is looked at for supporting the body's natural antioxidant balance at the cellular level. Also for supporting cellular wellness and healthy circulation. It is not a treatment for anything. It is not a medicine. It is not a cure for the way older bodies slow down, in the mind or anywhere else." "It is a supplement. It supports a layer of what the body is trying to do." She said, "I read about it for a year before I did anything. Then I took what I had read to my mother's doctor. Her doctor said it was a sensible thing to add. No interactions with anything she was on. Mention it at the next visit." "My mother took one tablet in a tall glass of cool water every morning for four years. Added to whatever else she was already doing. Not replacing any of it." Ruth looked out the shed door across the yard toward the sorting table where my mother and Miriam were bent over seedlings. She said, "I cannot tell you what that tablet did for my mother, Emily. I honestly cannot. Her mind slipped and it kept slipping. Some things you don't reverse at ninety. But she stayed at home two years longer than her doctors thought she would. She knew all six of her children's names until the year before she moved to the care home. Some days she was in the room with me and some days she wasn't. I do not credit the tablet. I do not know what to credit." She said, "What I can tell you is this. When I started reading about that supplement for my mother, I decided to take it myself too. I was sixty-eight. I wanted to know what she was drinking every morning." "I have been taking one tablet in a tall glass of cool water every morning for six years now. I am seventy-four. I know the names of every one of my grandchildren. I still write letters to your mother. I still run this seedling exchange every May." "That could be many things. My family lives long. My work is outside. I sleep well and I eat what I grow." "But I have been on the tablet for six years. And I have been steady in a way I want to name honestly, without promising you anything about what it might do for your mother." Ruth said, "The brand is called PrimeCell H2. It is a rapid-dissolve tablet. You drop it in a tall glass of cool water. It fizzes. You drink it fresh, right away." "Hydrogen is the smallest molecule that exists, so it escapes the moment it meets heat or is left sitting. That is why the protocol matters. Tablet, cool water, drunk fresh, right away." "Third-party tested for purity. One tablet, once a day. Added to whatever else you're already doing. Not replacing any of it." She reached to a small shelf behind her in the shed and pulled a small notepad from a pocket in her apron. She wrote the name on a slip of paper. PrimeCell H2. She handed it to me. She said, "Emily. Talk to your mother. Not today. Not on the drive home. This week, when you sit down together. Tell her what you have been noticing. She has been noticing too. Give her the paper. And then talk to her doctor. If her doctor thinks it's a sensible thing to add to what she is on, get her a bottle. If not, don't." She said, "I am not making promises about Helen's mind. Bodies are different. Some people notice something in the first few weeks. Others take much longer. Some don't notice much of anything at all. Your mother is your mother, not my mother, and not me." "But I have watched Helen tell the same story three times in an hour and I could not have driven home tonight without saying what I have said to you in this shed." I put the paper in my pocket. I said, "Thank you, Ruth." She said, "Come on. Miriam has probably talked your mother into taking home more tomato seedlings than her garden can hold." We drove home in the late afternoon. My mother was quiet in the passenger seat for the first twenty miles. Then she said, "Emily. I told the chow-chow story three times today." I said, "I know, Mom." She said, "I did not know I was doing it until we were driving away." I said, "I know." She said, "I have been noticing things. I have not wanted to say anything." I said, "I know, Mom. Ruth talked to me in the shed." She said, "Ruth is a good friend." I said, "She is." We drove for a few more miles. Then my mother said, "What did she say to you, Emily?" I told her. Wednesday afternoon I sat at my mother's kitchen table with her and we talked for two hours. I gave her the paper from Ruth. She looked at it. She said, "Call the doctor's office tomorrow. If they say it's a sensible thing to add and nothing interferes with anything, I'll do it. You'll help me remember." I said, "I will." I called Thursday morning. Gave the nurse the brand name. Told her my mother wanted to add one tablet to her mornings. Asked whether there was any reason she shouldn't add it to what she was already on, which was a multivitamin and a vitamin D and a calcium supplement and that was it. The nurse called back Friday afternoon. My mother's doctor said it was a sensible thing to add. No interactions to worry about. Mention it at the next physical. I ordered a bottle Friday night to be delivered to my mother's house. It came Wednesday. Thursday morning I drove over to her house before work. I made her coffee. I dropped a tablet into a tall glass of cool water. It fizzed. She drank it fresh, right away. She said, "Emily. This tastes like water with a small mineral edge." I said, "That's what Ruth said her mother said." She laughed. I kissed the top of her head and drove to school. I want to be careful about what I tell you next. My mother is one woman. Her body is her body. What happened for her might not happen for the woman you love. It might happen slower. It might happen differently. It might not happen at all. Bodies are different. The first three weeks I noticed nothing. My mother noticed nothing. She said one Sunday at dinner that she felt silly drinking fizzy water every morning and asked me if it was worth continuing. I asked her to give it another few weeks because Ruth had asked us to. Around the middle of the fifth week, my mother called me on a Tuesday evening. She said, "Emily. I finished chapter five of the novel on my nightstand." I said, "Mom. You've been on chapter four for two years." She said, "I know I have. I did not sit down to finish chapter five today. I just — I picked it up while my tea was steeping and I read for twenty minutes and I finished chapter five." I said, "That's good, Mom." She said, "It is." That was the whole phone call. A month after that I was at her house for Sunday dinner with my husband and my son. My son is eleven. He told my mother a long story about a bird he had seen in the woods behind our house. My mother followed the whole story. She asked what kind of bird. She asked whether he had brought his binoculars. She asked at the end whether he had seen the same bird again. My son said yes, twice. My mother said, "Then it lives there. That is good news, Sam." My husband and I did not look at each other. If we had, one of us would have cried. A couple of weeks after that my mother came home from the grocery store and she called me and she said, "Emily. The young man at the checkout — his name is Marcus. I have known his name for two years and I have not been able to reach for it in about a year. I said hello Marcus today when he rang me up. I said it like his name had always been there." She said, "He looked so pleased. His face lit up the way a young man's face lights up when someone remembers his name." She said, "I want to remember more names. Emily. I want to remember more names." I said, "I know, Mom." I sat in my kitchen with the phone against my ear for a long time after she hung up. I want to be really clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying my mother's mind is what it was at fifty. It is not. She still reaches for words some days. She still keeps the notepad by the phone. There are Sunday dinners where she is a little quieter than she used to be, and there are Sunday dinners where she is the woman I grew up with. I am not saying this supplement did any specific thing for her. Her doctor at her last visit did not credit the tablet. Her doctor credited whatever combination of things was going on for her — the daily walks she has kept up, the good sleep she has been getting, the meals she has been sharing with us again. She said, kindly, that a lot of things can shift a felt experience in a woman my mother's age. Her doctor is a scientist. She does not credit supplements without a controlled study. Which is fine. We did not need the credit. Mom is more often in the room than she was in May. That is all I have to tell you. Ruth called me a few weeks ago to check on Mom. I told her about chapter five of the novel. I told her about Marcus at the grocery store. I told her about my son's bird. Ruth was quiet on the phone for a minute. Then she said, "Emily. That is the thing that made me glad I said something in the shed." I said, "Me too, Ruth." She said, "Come out again this fall. I will show your mother my mother's chow-chow recipe. Miriam has it. We can sit at the table with her and let her tell us the story a hundred times." I said, "We would love that." Here's what the product is for, plainly. It supports the body's natural antioxidant balance at the cellular level. It also supports cellular wellness and healthy circulation. That's the whole of what it's for. It isn't a promise about your mother, or her stories, or her chapters, or anything at all. It isn't a promise about anything. Some people notice something in the first week or two. Others take much longer. Some, I'd imagine, not much at all. Bodies are different. My mother's is one, with one small story. It's a slow thing, taken steadily — the cellular layer it supports builds up gradually, not overnight. It isn't a pill you reach for on a Sunday your mother has told the same story three times. It's a glass of water she drinks every morning whether the Sunday before was easy or the Sunday before was hard. If you are a daughter reading this and you have been quietly watching your mother reach for words she used to have, close books she used to finish, tell the same story more than once at Sunday dinner — and her doctor has told her everything is within range and to come back next year — I want you to know that noticing is not being dramatic. It is paying attention to the woman who raised you. Talk to her. Not the way you would talk to her about a doctor's appointment. The slow way. At her kitchen table. With tea. Tell her you have been noticing. She has probably been noticing too. Then, if the two of you decide together, talk to her doctor or her pharmacist. Both, if you can. Especially if there's already something in the cabinet for the heart or anything else. Ask the plain question: is this sensible to add to what she's already doing? If they say yes — and there's a fair chance they will — it's a tablet in a tall glass of cool water in the morning. On top of everything else. Not in place of any of it. If they say no, then no. Either way, the two of you have had a conversation you weren't going to have. And if there is a Ruth in your mother's life — an old friend who has watched her tell the same story three times at a seedling table and who takes you into a shed to tell you the truth kindly — thank that woman. I have been thanking Ruth Zimmerman in my prayers every night since last May. That is the whole of it. That is what a Saturday morning at a Mennonite farm in the Shenandoah Valley, and a shed with an old friend of my mother's, and a phone call to a doctor's office, between them left us with. I would be a poor kind of daughter not to pass it on. P.S. Mom and I are driving back out to Ruth's in October. Ruth is going to give her Miriam's mother's chow-chow recipe on a handwritten card, and Ruth is going to let Mom tell the chow-chow story of her own mother a hundred more times at the kitchen table over lunch. Mom is going to make chow-chow this fall for the first time in twenty years, from her mother's recipe and Miriam's mother's recipe combined. I have been asked to bring the jars. P.P.S. Mom keeps a spare bottle in her cupboard now. PrimeCell is a small company and they've sold out before, and a daughter who watched her mother finish chapter five of a novel is not about to let her mother run low on the thing she adds to a morning that has been feeling like more mother in the room. It sits next to her coffee, every day. P.P.P.S. The steps, in order: Call her doctor or pharmacist first. Ask if it's sensible to add to what she's already on. If yes, drop one tablet in a tall glass of cool water each morning and drink it fresh, right away. Change nothing else — just add it. Then give it a few weeks. Be patient with her. P.P.P.P.S. PrimeCell H2 has a 90-day money-back guarantee — not satisfied for any reason, every penny back, no questions. For a supplement, that is the only sensible policy. Enough time to actually tell, instead of deciding in a week. I'd take the full ninety days. P.P.P.P.P.S. Last Sunday at dinner my mother told my son a story about my father from before I was born. It was a story she had never told me. My son listened all the way through and when she was done he said, "Grandma, I wish I could have met him." She said, "He would have loved you, Sam." She said it clean and clear and all the way through. That is not a headline. It is a Sunday dinner with a grandmother and a grandson. But a daughter who has been watching her mother reach for words for three years will tell you a clean clear sentence about a grandfather her grandson never met is the whole thing. https://track.getamalahealth.com/5548c06d-d9c3-4785-b466-fec64a6fdb28 Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.