Lavender

The smell of old trunks full of antique lace and linens.  The small atomizer perfume bottle that sat on my grandmother's dressing table.  The drawer liners in the chest of drawers in my parents' bedroom.  Wafting through all of these faded, dog-eared photos  stored in the memory of my childhood is the dim and musty smell of old lavender. 

In every drawer and trunk were the sachets. My grandmother, Dorothea, saved the scraps from her other sewing projects and turned them into small bundles, filled with dried lavender blossoms, gathered together with a ribbon, and tied to make a small sachetti, a small sack.  I suspect that lavender once employed would stay in use for decades. Quits for the cottage on the banks of the Walla Walla River, were made from cut up squares of my grandfather's wool suits, sandwiched with a hefty flannel backing, around an old wool blanket that was no longer "servicable".  Old dresses were turned into decorative aprons and kitchen towels, pot holders and ruffles on skirts or curtains.  Leftovers always found their way into stews and soups and glass jars were used over and over again for jams and jellies, and all manner of preserves.  Her pickle recipe was a carefully guarded secret.

My grandmother was a believer in the virtue of frugality, the importance of simple beauty and the power of lavender.  She also gathered chamomile for bedtime tea, and dandelions for spring tonics.  She grew comfrey and other assorted herbs for various medicinal reasons.  She made poultices from onions and mustard and socks that smelled strongly of the inside of old boots.  She fed children spoonfuls of vile tasting cod liver oil.  I have a strong automatic gag response still today from any liquid medicine as a result of my early training.  She put camphor and eucalyptus in pots of water on the stove and made us lean over and breathe in the steam if we had a cough.  For congestion, she smeared Vicks on our chests and wrapped us in woolen rags.  When she died, in her late 80's, nearly all of this knowledge went with her.  I was a young adult, very modern, had pills for anything I might need, and had absolutely no interest in any of this.

I was quite mistaken.  I had great need of this information that she had learned from those who came before her.  But it was a good many years later before I came to realize it. The beauty of all of this seemed remote and as unnecessary as a clothes line or a hot water bottle.  I was modern.  My world included prescription medicine, electric blankets and electric clothes dryers. Besides,  I never really cared for lavender smells, probably because they were associated with musty places and old things. 

To make matters worse, there is the stuff called "lavender" that is put into mall store candles and discount lotions. Goodness knows what is actually in that stuff, but I have learned to avoid walking in in front of a certain mall candle store because I will be hit with an instant headache from the wafting chemical smells that cloud the immediate area.  This false lavender is especially repellent.

So how did it come to be that now lavender is my nearly best friend?  (Not to mention hot water bottles and clothes lines.)  I keep a bottle of lavender essential oil by my bedside and one in my oil supply box.  I dab it on my pillow cases and pour a drop in the humidifier.  I love it in the bath, just a couple of drops under the running water. I put it on scars and on healing cuts and scrapes and it works miracles.  

There is a great difference between the synthetics, the carelessly distilled and the chemically grown lavender, and pure organic essential oil, therapeutic grade.  I can actually drink this lavender oil but choose not to.  I must say that it doesn't taste especially good.  I used just a tiny drop on my finger to rub on my gums after the dentist tore them up a bit, and it healed them almost instantly.  But it truly didn't taste good.  However, for me, the benefit is well worth a second or two of bitterness.

It seems like things that smell so sweet should also taste sweet but as with vanilla, fabulous fragrance doesn't also equal fabulous taste.  It's not so bad, though. It's just a teensy bit on the tip of the finger, applied to the sore spot.  And I have had numerous opportunities to try it so I know that it works every time.

 Lavender has been seen to be antimicrobal, antifungal, antimutagenic, antitoxic, antitumor, cardiotonic, regenerative, anticoagulant, antidepressant and sedative.  Quite a list, if you ask me!   And that's not all.  In Medieval France it had an interesting dichotomy of uses.  It was thought to help preserve chastity and also to act as an aphrodisiac. It would seem that the best way to see which way it works on each of us would be to try it!

I no longer smell the old musty attic smell when I sniff the new pure oil that has become indispensable   This has a light fresh smell.  I believe my grandmother would have approved.  Maybe she would have made poultices of it or put a drop in steaming water.  But i do believe that somewhere she is smiling and saying, "Finally!"