Blessings, Mormons, and Olive Oil by Ginger Tolman

Blessings, Mormons, and Olive Oil | Ginger Tolman

My body is hot with fever, and I push out an asthmatic wheeze. I am delusional and list a bit in the kitchen chair. My skinny bare legs stick to the Naugahyde. Panic sets in as less and less oxygen enters my lungs. I am crying and gasping and terrified. I am eight.

Men encircle me and hands are placed on my head, steadying me, capturing heat. Deep voices murmur invocations. Warm oil seeps onto my scalp. I reach up to itch it. 

This is my first conscious experience with olive oil. As an anointment, part of the priesthood blessing of Mormon tradition; the laying on of hands to heal. My asthma wanes, my fever lowers, and I go outside to play. 

My father, Leo Tolman, owned Tolman’s Dry Cleaners in Downey, California. He’d traded potato farming and bone-cold Idaho winters for orange groves and fig trees. He found the wife he would adore for 55 years, raised eight children—six of whom were adopted—and practiced his faith with aplomb.

One can ask for a blessing at any age for any reason that feels credible. High fevers, upcoming finals, difficult pregnancies, terminal diagnoses, boyfriend travails, waning faith– all were fair game. Depending on the severity of the ailment, other priesthood holders were called to the home or hospital room, adding numbers to power. 

The ritual began with Dad pulling out a small bottle of Pompeii Olive Oil from the back of the fridge. As a bearer of the Melchizedek Priesthood, he consecrated the vial with prayer. His personal touch was to warm the oil by heating it in a small pan of water, the same pan used for decades to warm baby formula. He would drip a small amount on the top of the afflicted persons scalp and lay his hands gently on their head. Then he prayed, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if to gain steady ground. His voice alone could round a sharp edge and send the darkest fear running. 

When the hands gently holding your head were those of a loved one, a trusted one, and one who believed in his ability to heal, the conjuring of miracles became a common event.

As an adult, I introduced my father to the joy of olive oil as a culinary blessing, and he began to cook as well as heal with it. He purchased in bulk, large bottles of EVOO that were stored on cool, dark shelves, pulled out daily to drizzle, toss, sauté, dip into, and taste. He watched cooking shows on the sly to find new uses. Olive oil cakes soaked in lemon syrup, crisply crusted mushrooms, and fried parsley began appearing on our plates. The small bottle of Pompeii (non-virgin, not first pressed) still resided in the back of the fridge, standing its ground for a different purpose.

My Dad and I considered olive oil a divine agent, a transporter of both culinary and physical miracles. A fresh baguette dipped in a cold-pressed EVOO with a touch of balsamic was some nifty transmogrification. And you couldn’t shake a stick at an asthma attack that ceased mid-breath. 

Eventually, we traded California for Utah to be nearer the Motherland of Mormonism. Shortly thereafter, over a Thanksgiving weekend, Dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Over the next nine months, we fed him, stroked his head, laughed with him, and prayed with him. My daughter, eight years old, brought him sprigs of mint and white grapes from the vines he had planted in the garden. Her dog, a black Lab named Purple, would not leave their side. 

One Sunday, six of the brethren gathered in his bedroom to offer a blessing. I was there to hold the oil and give it to whomever was asked to administer it.

“I want Ginger to give the blessing,” said my father.

Every man in the room looked askance.

I was a woman, not a practicing Mormon, and not a priesthood holder. I used inhalers for my asthma now, not blessings. 

“It must be the medications,” said Brother Smart. 

“It’s not,” said my father. 

With a sharp glance at the men, I warmed the bottle between my hands, anointed my father’s head, and began the prayer. My father and I held secrets.

After the last blessing, the one meant to ease the passing, not save the life, he took his last rattled breath. As the hearse took away what remained of him, we prepared the house for visitors. I wiped counters and cleared out the fridge for the imminent arrival of endless Jell-O salads and funeral potatoes. There it was. The bottle of olive oil. The one for blessings, not for salad. I reached for it, knowing it would never be used again, and then returned it, gently, to its place. 

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