The Story of Enfleurage 6
Stop and Start
I had been playing around with an unrealistic idea of distilling orange blossoms but this was not my path at all. Among other things, I badly underestimated the real estate costs in orange growing California. And the breast cancer diagnosis created complete havoc. I’m sure I’m not the only person to experience disappointments in some personal relationships not withstanding the test of illness. I did live through it though. But the chemo and multiple surgeries were hard and created scars on my spirit as well as my body. After my chemo I went back to Oman, this time to Muscat, and lucked into a beautiful space in the diplomatic quarter, full of large trees, small parks, a functioning beach, and a good grocery store. This time it was all much easier and I had support and the distillery now has 10 copper alembics on a recycling and mainly gravity fed system. I have a big and real office, for the first time, and a tiny boutique and it’s perfect.
Someday I guess I will write more about this journey but I’m itching to go off onto a different subject now, and that is natural aromatics.
For explanation’s sake, I started writing this in the Covid summer, after New York’s trial by fire, which Tom and I watched in horror from Muscat each night, as Governor Cuomo gave his nightly synopsis and the sirens wailed, the mobile morgues filled, and everything else stopped. Oman sank into Covid horror over the summer too, not in so dramatic a fashion, but driven by people indoors for the summer. We had several lockdowns and curfews and still mandated mask wearing and every single place has a temperature check. Our numbers are now down. We still have it but I think we are going in the right direction—things have opened now, the ICU bed count is manageable, and it was just announced we will start receiving vaccines in a few weeks. Our weather has cooled now, and it’s a pleasure to be outside, and this has also helped our numbers.
Post script on this entry—It’s now January 2022, and me and Tom are both triple vaxxed. The distillery was well taken care of throughout the pandemic, and the past 18 months have been hard in terms of isolation, and uncertainty, but we are luckier than most. I was not able to get a vaccine here in Oman, even with a doctors note, although others were able to. Finally, completely fed up, I went back to NYC to get my pfizer shots and I stayed several months. Tom is visiting me here, and we finished our 2021 essential oil production last week.