madrobins. Of Linseed Oil and Memory (Reply)

Linseed oil, also known as flax seed oil or simply flax oil, is a clear to yellowish drying oil derived from the dried ripe seeds of the flax plant (Linum usitatissimum, Linaceae). It is obtained by pressing, followed by an optional stage of solvent extraction.

When used as a wood finish, linseed oil does not cover the surface as varnish does, but soaks into the (visible and microscopic) pores, leaving a shiny but not glossy surface that shows off the grain. Wood treated with linseed oil is resistant to denting and scratches are easily repaired, but the wood and oil surface is not as hard as a modern varnish, and it slowly absorbs moisture if allowed to stay wet. -- from Wikipedia

My mother, who died almost twenty-two years ago, had an abiding faith in the power of linseed oil. One of my strongest memories is of Mom, stripped down to her summer work uniform (bra and slightly droopy nylon underpants, or sometimes a knitted shell and shorts) treating the kitchen dining table to another linseed oil bath.

My mother was tiny: 5'3" at her largest, slender when she was young, frail later, with an abundance of nervous energy she attempted to quell, in later years, with bourbon in her tea. She drank a lot of tea. While she scorned most of the usual housewifely pursuits, there were certain things--like linseed oiling the table--that were sacraments to her. The kitchen table was almost six feet in diameter, a huge round dark-wood Victorian table with a heavily carved pedestal base; since the kitchen was an open area, thirty feet by forty or so, a table of that size was right at home there. So Mom, dressed to oil, would spend an afternoon pouring linseed oil on the table, massaging it in, waiting (with more tea) and returning to massage the standing oil off. To do all this rubbing she had to more or less fling herself half way across the table, rubbing fiercely with bits of old shirts she kept specifically for this purpose. Often she tried to get me involved, but as this looked about as much fun as flossing, I generally tried to escape. So there's Mom, pushing a rag up and down half the table, then circling a bit around the perimeter and rubbing there, and so on and on.

Despite her increasing frailty as she grew older, Mom would occasionally become possessed with a need to oil the table. I'm not sure, at this remove, what the process meant to her: taking care of a loved object? By this time I wasn't living at home, and whatever we talked about when I was at home, it wasn't the table or linseed oil. The problem was, she had less and less energy--or reach--for rubbing the excess oil off after it had been spread on and allowed to sink it. So after a while the table began to take on a kind of icky tack to it, not outright stickiness, but...ick. And yet...linseed oil. Linseed oil had to be beneficial, right?

Some years after Mom died the Spouse and I were visiting at home one weekend, and my aunts--four of my father's sisters (Ethel, Ronda, Eva and Linda) were visiting too. Sitting around the table after dinner one night someone--one of the aunts, I think--began to rub irritably at the table, trying to massage away the tackiness of the surface. Soon this became a full-fledged rub-in, with all four aunts (I think Ethel might have been ninety--none of them were under seventy) and the Spouse, who loves a good project, working away at the table with fine steel wool and a will. There may have been something therapeutic to this: none of the people who married into my father's family were ever really approved of by the rest of the family, and my mother, third of Dad's wives and the most floridly troubled and difficult, was certainly no exception. So there was probably a certain amount of pleasure derived in cleaning up Mom's handiwork, and no acknowledgment that at some point she had done the job properly. In any event, the table was de-tacked and re-oiled (properly) and then, as far as I know, never oiled again until we sold the house last year.

Which leads me to today, when I have been suffered to sit around in my nightgown drinking coffee and reading the Sunday Times, in honor of Mother's Day. Our living room-dining room is much smaller than the kitchen at the barn, but it is graced by a lovely Shaker-style cherry drop-leaf table, our wedding present from the in-laws. And I oiled it today. Not with linseed oil, which is not recommended by the maker, but with Watco Danish Oil, a substance so apparently flammable (to read the warnings on the can, anyway) that it's a wonder I haven't burst into flames already. And as I massaged the oil into the table, then reheated my coffee while I waited the half-hour until I could wipe off the excess, I realized that this might be my concession to the Hallmark Card nature of today, a little bit of continuity from my mother's life to my own. I was very careful to wipe off all the excess oil.