This morning I made homemade soap because I was out. I love my homemade soap. It is made with coconut oil, olive oil, honey, oatmeal, and a little Geranium essential oil. It is so luxurious. I love how fresh and clean it makes me feel without drying or hurting my sensitive skin. It is one of my homemade treasures that the faeries inspired me to create.
I remember the day early one spring morning in the Pacific Northwest as a young child of 7 years old, when, as I’ve said before, I could barely stand waiting for the morning light to begin chasing butterflies and playing with my faeries. I remember bringing my blanket, that my mom made for me, outside. The wind was still chilly but the sun dancing through the cloud breaks warmed my pale winter skin. I remember wrapping up in my blanket after the dew dried off the grass, in the late morning, and laying in the grass. I loved the feeling of the warm sun as it collected inside my blanket from the frequent cloud breaks. Soon, it was warm and cozy. I enjoyed looking up and watching the sunlight play in the layers of fabric and stuffing in my blanket and loved imagining how beautiful the white bulky clouds quickly passing over the blue sky must have looked but I didn’t want to leave the warmth of my blanket.
Before long, I heard the excited chatter of my faeries urging me to follow them. I told them in my most adult 7-year-old voice, “Go away, I am just getting warm.” They, of course, didn’t leave me alone. They kept teasing me by saying that I looked like a little slug and that I was probably too slow to follow them anyway. They giggled and laughed but I again told them to leave me here for just a little longer. At that moment, I felt my blanket lift off me. I giggled and laughed with them and followed them into the woods behind my home. As I skipped along behind my faeries, I laughed and even though it was cool outside, still the breeze felt good as it played through my hair, and while I remained warm from being inside the blanket, I enjoyed it. But we left the open space of my backyard where there was more shade from the trees in the woods and soon I felt cold again.
Fortunately, we came to a little faerie cove inside a burnt-out tree that must have been hit by lightning and looked more like a tall stump that was hollowed out. I followed them inside the little cove hidden from the wind and there the magic began. Inside was a much larger space than it seemed from the outside. There was a little magical faerie fire glowing in the middle of the room with beautiful little green, brown and pink tree faeries dancing around a large pot as they dropped green leaves, bark, sap and blossoms into it. One faerie was stirring it with a large wooden spoon. I was too young to be very aware of what they were doing but after a few hours of stirring, letting it bubble and many other steps I didn’t remember, they poured the contents into little molds shaped like flowers and berries and birds and other possibly celtic knot-type symbols.
Then they fed me their sweet spring juice that was a little bitter which they told me would clean the winter sluggishness out of me. And, of course, they giggled when they used the word sluggish and I shook my little pointer finger at them and then giggled too. After more time passed, time passes differently in faerieland than it does here, so I can’t say for sure how long it was, but I was getting tired so it must have been the better part of the afternoon, the faeries removed a bar from one of the molds and handed it to me. It smelled sweet, like spring cherry blossoms, and I wanted to eat it but they stopped me right before I put it into my mouth and scolded me with a giggle. “Don’t eat our soap, silly girl.”
I have always loved faerie soap and always used more of it than I probably should have whenever I have had the chance to. It isn’t like anything we are used to. It is light and the bubbles almost feels tickly but when you wash off the bubbles, your skin feels silky and young and smells of the wind on your face or the wind through spring blossoms or the smell of warm pine needles warming in the summer sun or any number of luxurious faerie smells. And you always feel better for having used it, I mean better on the inside, but that’s probably the magic. For years, I carried the wish to be able to make my own soap but it wasn’t until a couple years ago that I found a recipe that was at once both simple and luxurious and reminded me of the faerie’s soap. It is the closest thing to it in our world. And it makes me super happy.
One of the things I love about being with the faeries is that all the things they do on the outside, like cleaning with their soap, or wearing their clothes, or looking at their creations, or dancing in their balls or laughing with them, really almost any activity with them, makes you feel better. Sometimes it helps emotions that are sad come out and you might cry or be sad but you always feel better for having let it go. You aren’t left with one of those crying headaches, you feel lighter, freer and more alive. And that was the same way with this empty room that Grandma Mae walked with me into deep inside the cedar. After crying like I was going to die, my sobs slowed down and my breathing began to return to a more normal rhythm and all the circumstances of my life that had been repeating themselves over and over in my head and heart I was able to release, no longer holding onto the pain of the experience, and I soon felt more peace and comfort.
Grandma Mae had been kneeling next to me and holding me so that I hadn’t fallen completely to the ground and now that I began to regain control, she released me and just looked at me, or so I thought. It took me a few minutes before I dared look back at her and when I did I noticed two things, one she wasn’t looking directly at me but just beyond me, however, before I could look at what she was looking at I saw the most beautiful thing. I don’t know why I had never seen this before, maybe it was because I hadn’t been clear enough of my own pain to notice things about her but her eyes were no ordinary blue, they were a deep midnight blue, almost purple color. “Grandma, your eyes are beautiful. I’ve never noticed how beautiful a color they are. I am sorry.”
I felt badly, like I hadn’t been the kind of friend I should have been, or like I hadn’t seen her or appreciated her like she deserved. I felt wonder at the beauty of her eyes and it made me really happy. I then remembered that she wasn’t looking directly at me but just beyond me. I followed her gaze behind me, towards what I had first thought were plain white walls but after I had worked through my heartache and adjusted to the brightness of the room, I almost couldn’t believe what I was looking at and that I didn’t see it when I first got in.
With Grandma’s help, I stood and wiped my tears with the tissue the pink faerie had given me on the way in, and tried to comprehend what I was looking at. The entire white wall behind me wasn’t a solid whitewashed wall like I had assumed it was, it was a wall of faeries in white flowing clothing, fluttering slowly, close enough to each other to make the wall look solid and in the perfect synchronization to not hit or knock the faerie next to them out of place. Once I noticed them, like a flock of hundreds of snow geese, in one breathe, they flew towards us and surrounded us.
