The best time of day is twilight in my mother’s garden. When the breeze is just right, and you can barely see your hand in front of your face, the world slows to the stillness between heartbeats. In the space of an hour, or sometimes less, the prettiest shade of pink sweeps across the sky, and the sun disappears for the night, leaving thousands of tiny stars in its wake.

When we were little, we would pile into the bathtub at twilight – all three sisters at once – and after a big mess involving bubbles and mermaids and pirates, there would be fluffy towels and bedtime stories and sweetest dreams.

Somehow, bath time (or shower time) lost its magic a little bit on the way to adulthood. I cannot tell you how many mornings I have cursed in the shower because I am out of shampoo and late, again, to work, but the discovery of making my own soap has slowed the growing-up process remarkably.

Soap happens like this: plants grow on farms or in forests. Their oils are cold-pressed and shipped to warehouses and then to other places and then to my kitchen. Chemists dress up in gloves and goggles and do something mysterious that yields sodium hydroxide. They put it in bags, which travel around and then end up in my kitchen. Lavender and peppermint grow in big, unruly clumps, and then they are steam-distilled. Their essential oils are poured into amber, medicine-like bottles, and they, too, come to live in my kitchen. At twilight on the best nights of the week, I open all my kitchen cabinets, and after a great rustling of spoons and bowls and mixers and ingredients, there is soap, marbled with comfrey root or dotted with poppyseeds. Sometimes, after I clean up the mess, there is still time to listen to my mother’s peacocks as they chatter and settle into the big tree for the night.

They say handmade soap is better for you because of glycerin, a molecule of moisture-attracting wonder that occurs once for every three molecules of actual soap rendered in the soapmaking process. Big-time manufacturers take it out and re-sell it to a variety of other manufacturers, but I do not have, nor do I want, such impressive powers, so the glycerin in my soap stays put. Lucky you.

I say my handmade soap is better for you because it’s made in the Windrow Road guest house with the best ingredients in this sweet world. It smells great, it lathers well, and the textures and swirls created with herbs and botanicals are downright pretty.

For best results, find someone to kiss from time to time, go to yoga, adopt a pet from the animal shelter, get some religion, call your mother, listen to music, pick up trash in your neighborhood, and be extremely kind to small children. Life, after all, is about balance, soap is about soap, and hugging a tree never hurt anybody.

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