EDIBLE COCONUT ROSE SUGAR SCRUB.

Every few months or so, and certainly in the romantic fixation of Valentine’s Day, I begin to think I know what love is. How it ought to feel, the breath it catches in my throat, the texture of its weight against my heart, the way it turns me inside out. Its expansive yes. My dad and his partner Susan sent me a short passage by the lovely poet David Whyte earlier this week, about not naming love too soon. When we do, we limit it. We rob it of the oxygen it needs to expand.

But the truth is, there are so very many kinds of love. There is the love I see dear friends experiencing for the first time this year as they become mothers and fathers, the love between two friends who’ve known each other for decades, the love between lovers just nascently entangled, the love between teacher and student, the love between near-strangers falling into a friendship that will sustain them for years. The truth is, there are infinite loves. Loves so numerous and ineffable that they cannot ever even hope to be named.

This is, perhaps, the intoxication of love.

And so, for all things intoxicating and unnameable: This edible, sparkling coconut rose sugar scrub.

Make this for yourself, for your lover, for your friends, for your family. Make it for that adorable human you always see at the coffee shop. Heck, make it for your barista. Love is alive.

One last thing before the recipe: A list I wrote on The List App (download it and find me!) on all the forms love takes, on all the strange and perfect ways I have been loved.

WAYS TO SHOW SOMEONE YOU LOVE THEM
For many kinds of love.

1. Stay on the phone with them while they attempt to parallel park into a very tiny spot, no matter how long it takes, just silently being there.

2. Get up before them and go find their favorite breakfast thing and bring it back while they’re still asleep.

3. Send them mail that says “I love you, that’s all” for no reason.

4. Make food into the shape of a heart for them.

5. Play them their favorite song without their asking, even if it’s been played 10,000x in the past month.

6. Ask “how are you?”, but actually mean it.

7. Say “I love you”, but actually mean it.

8. Write their name on many surfaces, sometimes your body.

9. Write spontaneous, rhyming Dr. Seussian poetry for them (and don’t give it to them if it’s creepy).

10. Pick up the phone when they call after large dogs running full speed down Runyon Canyon slam into them and they don’t know what to do.

11. Come over when their house has been burglarized and talk to the police for them.

12. Make them a homeopathic get-well kit with a laminated guide that will last forever.

13. Tell them the thing they don’t want to hear.

14. Read them to sleep.

15. Breathe with them.

16. Listen.

And maybe make them some of this edible coconut rose sugar scrub.