On Monday I went over to Kathleen's house and we made soap.
Now I had never made soap before. I mean...why?
They sell that shit everywhere.
I have, in the last few years, learned that there is a huge difference in say, a bar of Dove soap and a bar of French milled olive-oil, lavender soap and I have spoiled myself by buying and using the good stuff and have been gifted with even better stuff. And I have used and loved Dr. Bronner's soap since the early 1970's when all he made was Peppermint because it felt so good to wash my face and body with all that lovely tingliness although really, it did not work as well for shampoo or toothpaste and believe me, I tried. But just reading the label made me feel fairly holy.
All One, indeed!
So when Kathleen brought up soap-making I was not as excited as I could have been. But she was positively about-to-burst excited by the prospect and had bought essential oils and herbs and lye and fats and was ready, ready, ready and she'd been making and selling soap for many years and since I adore Kathleen and since it would mean I'd get to spend the day with her and learn something new, I agreed to join her and help out.
Kathleen is something of a scientist as well as something of a witch and I trust her implicitly and she measured out the lye and the water and carefully combined them and she let me measure out the fats. Coconut oil, shealoe oil, shortening, olive oil, sunflower oil, palm oil, I-don't-even-remember-oils and Vitamin E which acts to help preserve the soap's freshness. And those went into a big pan on the stove and were slowly heated until everything was melted and then she put the mixer to them and added the lye-water and the process of sopanification began. Really. That's a word.
And after about forty minutes of mixing the mixture got creamy and dreamy and rich looking. I wanted to eat it. When she started adding the lemon verbena and mint and lavender and jasmine and rose, I really wanted to eat it. She ground up oatmeal to go in the lavender mixture to make a face soap and she added ground mint to the peppermint/spearmint mixture to make a wake-you-up! soap and she poured the lemon verbena with lemon peel mixture over cut pieces of loofa that she had grown and cleaned and bleached herself to make scrubbing soap.
Whoa!
And then she set the trays of various mixtures in her guest room and covered them up with her grandmother's quilt and that was that.
Until yesterday when she brought the trays over to my house to cut and that's when I learned why making soap is such a good thing.
You can't imagine how my house smells.
And you can't imagine the way this soap with all its fats and oils lathers and bubbles and is creamy and soft and sweet on the skin.
If I had to compare the experience to something, I would say it's not unlike having your first slice of homemade, just-out-of-the-oven bread after a lifetime of eating nothing but what comes in a package at the grocery store. With real butter and honey on it.
After we cut the soap and washed our hands (a lot) we had a martini and started making plans for soaps and balms for our new pregnant lady. And her baby. I got a visual image of Lily washing her newborn in the purest, uncolored, unadulterated soap with maybe just a hint of lavender in it, and how it would feel to both the baby and the mama, that creamy soap smoothing over that creamy skin in the warm water, the white against the pink, the sweet against the sweeter.
And how Lily will rinse the bubbles off her baby and wrap him or her up in a fluffy towel and kiss her (sorry, I can't help but think it's a girl and I'm usually wrong about these things) belly and dress her and then nurse her, wondering and marveling at the tender, sweet-smelling skin of her fresh-washed baby.
Oh. Soap. Homemade soap.
Thank-you, Kathleen, for teaching me this new thing. For opening my eyes to this beautiful art.
I think my life is changed forever and I will be a better and cleaner person for it.
I said it before, I'll say it again- taking orders here for pure and perfect Sittin' On A Porch Brand Homemade Soap.
