The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern

by Lynda Cohen Loigman

Esther tried to reassure her. “I believe you are gifted,” she said. “That is why I agreed to teach you. But you are young, and you must learn patience. I do not doubt that you will work hard, but you are still searching for the easiest answers. You still think illness can be cured with a pill or a powder and a few old words. You still think that the outcome is something you can control.”

“Then what is the point? Why do this at all?” “Because there is still good that we can do. Because sometimes our remedies can cure. Because we can bear witness to a woman who suffers when her doctors refuse to see her pain. Because even when we cannot heal, a bowl of chicken soup can offer comfort.”

Past and present, joy and sorrow mingled together in the shining glass. Augusta wasn’t merely her eighty-year-old self—she was fourteen and sixteen, two and twelve. She was a child swimming in the ocean with her mother and a young woman watching her aunt make soup. She was a curious girl who asked too many questions. She was a grieving daughter at her mother’s funeral and a maid of honor at her sister’s wedding.

For a moment, Augusta could remember what it felt like to believe—not in the magic of witches or fairies, but in the magic of women who knew how to heal; the magic of women in the quiet of their kitchens, who could sweeten a bitter woman’s heart or soothe a man’s temper with a cup of tea. The ones who knew how to bring down a fever, assuage a toothache, or quiet a child with nothing more than a spoonful of honey, a gentle hand, and a few whispered words.

After eighty-one years and two failed love elixirs, Augusta Stern knew exactly who she was—a woman of science like her father, an old-world healer like her aunt. She believed in medicine and in miracles. She believed in family and in love. She believed in the power of moonlight in kitchens, in the power of women, in the power of words. She believed that even on life’s darkest days, a bowl of chicken soup could offer comfort. She believed that the world still held a bit of magic for those who were patient and wise enough to wait.

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern is a reminder that age doesn’t change who we are, that second chances are always possible, and that it is never too late to try to recapture the lost magic of our youth.