Somewhere in my barn is a big plastic tub of full of Sage's baby pictures.
And buried toward the bottom is a picture of a two-year old "Baby Sage" (as we called him). In the photograph he is sitting in a dishpan full of water in the kitchen sink – sparkling eyes, a beaming smile, and blonde curls winging wildly off his head in all directions.
It's the picture that I carefully packed in an envelope and sent to an illustrator when I needed a logo for a small business I was dreaming of. That picture is my LüSa Organics Baby and Kids logo.
(It's enough of a spot-on rendering that Pete once found that dishpan photo and not knowing I had sent it to the artist years before said, "This looks exactly like our baby label!")
And I wonder sometimes what it's like growing up LüSa. Not just in the bathroom or the diaper bag but everyday – in every way.
The scent memories of being wrapped in this world from birth to adulthood must be profound.
Sage, the boy for whom I invented Booty Balm. Lupine, the one whose (late) labor I brought on by hauling bags of organic sugar around the soap studio, making scrubs.
Both of their lives tangled up in the scent of lavender, peppermint, and patchouli from the start.
I remember growing up in the Bee Man, my dad's home-based business.
I remember the phone ringing during dinnertime. We'd all look at mom, and she'd give him the "don't you dare answer that – it's dinner time" face.
I remember my first job, standing beside a chest freezer in the garage, tearing open frozen bald faced hornets nests and using tweezers to extract the insects. (Really.) I'd drop them into a bag, then back into the freezer, working fast to keep them from thawing. (My dad shipped them off to a medical laboratory that used their venom to make medicine.)
But my life growing up was more compartmentalized.
Work, school, home.
For my kids it's all a jumble.
Our life defies compartments.
We hand milk our goat together, then lug the milk to LüSa for goat milk soap. We drive to Madison to meet my parents, but rendezvous with a grassfed beef farmer in the parking lot along the way to source sustainably raised tallow. We stop at a friend's organic farm on the way home from lessons to check on the calendula we'll be infusing for balms. We forage goldenrod and violet leaf in the morning together before I head to work to make infusions.
Lupine delights in helping. Foraging plants, blending scents, dreaming up new products. It's her playground.
Sage earns money for projects by helping at LüSa as well. Labeling, cleaning up, helping me engineer solutions to problems like "how can we drill out twenty mason jar lids (or essential oil diffuser ornaments) with consistent hole placement all at one time?"
At least once a week the kids go with me to work. And even when they don't I bound to return home with sweetly scented treasures in my pockets and bag, products for them to test out and give me their feedback.
And when we do go to work together the scent of our life and our livelihood greets us at the door.
And I wonder… when I am old and gone and my children are grown with lives of their own, will they catch the scent of lavender in the air and be transported back to this moment?
I hope so.
It's a fine place to be.
Just for fun, please enjoy a free gift with every LüSa Organics order you place this weekend. Just add a comment to your order of "good Clean fun" and I'll add a little something extra.
Our Autumn Treasure Box is nearly sold out, so if that's what you're after don't wait! There are only two dozen left and they ship out next week. (And it's a good one. I promise!) Get a free tote bag with every annual Treasure Box Subscription by adding a note of "ATB=Tote" to your order.
Oh, and "Kindness is Contagious" t-shirts are full on restocked. Grab them in any size you need. We love these. I'll add a free 2 oz (travel-sized) soap sample with every shirt you order this week.
