The Passing of the Egg

It was about 7 in the evening the other night when we had visitors—visitors that some family members are not extremely fond of.  It had been a hot day and was probably about 90 degrees in our apartment.  We were all sticky and tired.  Soon after the visitors left, Iris became restless and irritable, just plain cranky.  As she’s generally pretty cheerful and my mother-in-law heard Iris grumbling from the hallway, she knocked on our door, sure she knew the problem, but also the cure. 

As for me I would have attributed Iris’s discontented state to the heat and being tired.  My mother-in-law, on the other hand, declared negative vibes from a bad aura to be the culprit.  Nevertheless, true to a strong Peruvian remedy for that superstition, she also had a solution. 

As I prepared warm water to put into Iris’s little bathtub so she could feel clean and refreshed, Iris’s uncle followed her abuelita’s commands to “go buy some eggs at a nearby shop, and quickly!”  Returning with three eggs at room temperature, she took one out of the little sack.  As I undressed Iris for her bath, her grandma began to move the egg in a circular motion above her head then methodically massage every centimeter of her little body with the egg.  Iris began to calm down. 

Once again our opinons differed.  I believed she’d calmed down because she was free of her clothes and ready for her beloved bath and perhaps the massage was relaxing.  My mother-in-law insisted that the eggs had absorbed the negative energy and to prove her point put the egg into a cup of water and as a few bubbles from the egg white were slowly drawn upward to the water’s surface, the great negativity from evil eyes was disappearing.  She then threw the egg out of the house into the street. 

After a nice long bath and some warm milk, Iris was as happy as a lark—undoubtedly because of the passing of the egg.