My name is Ruth. I'm 78 years old, and for 34 years I made soap by hand in a little shop in Sacramento, between a nail salon and an H&R Block. My granddaughter is typing this for me. I can't make heads or tails of the internet, which, as you'll see, is part of the problem.

My mother grew up in a small village in Japan. When she came to California, she brought very little with her. One of those things was a way of making soap with persimmon. Back home, that's what folks used for the smell that comes with getting older. You know the one. You shower, you wash the sheets, and somehow it's still there. Nobody talks about it.

I didn't talk about it either. I just made the soap, and people kept coming back. A retired nurse who drove in from Stockton every two months. A trucker who kept a bar in his cab. Our pastor, who bought six at a time and asked me not to tell his wife. I never did, until now. Sorry, Pastor Jim.

Some of them wrote me letters. I kept every one in a shoebox under the little desk in the back. On the hard days I still read them with a cup of tea going cold.

Everything starts on a kitchen scale. Olive oil, coconut oil, the same amounts every time, written in a notebook that is older than my granddaughter. I never trusted a machine to do it for me.

Then the persimmon goes into the big pot on the hot plate, and I stir it with a long wooden spoon until it is ready. You learn to feel when. My mother could tell by the sound.

I pour the warm soap into long wooden molds, and then I tuck an old wool blanket around each one, the way you would tuck in a child. Warm and quiet is how it sets best.

I check them in the morning. Some days it is perfect. Some days I start over. That is the honest part nobody puts on the box.

Once a block is firm I cut it into bars with a wire, trim the edges with a paring knife so they sit nicely in your hand, and press my stamp into the top. Every bar passes through my hands at least five times.

Orange shavings end up everywhere. My granddaughter finds them in her hair. I find them in my cardigan pockets for weeks.

Then the part nobody wants to wait for. The trays go up on the racks and they sit. Six weeks. Not two. That is when the bar gets hard, mild and long-lasting, and it is the whole reason I could never make it cheaper.

Cheaper soap skips the wait. You can smell it, and so can your skin.

A few years ago, customers started bringing boxes into my shop. "Ruth, is this yours?" It wasn't. "Handmade Japanese Persimmon Soap." A sweet old lady on the front who looked a little like me. Four dollars, shipped from who knows where. I opened one up. It smelled like candy and it was gone in a week. I couldn't tell you if there was any persimmon in it at all.

What bothered me wasn't the money. It was something a woman told me at the register one afternoon: "I tried one of those online. It didn't do a thing. I figured persimmon soap was just a gimmick." She almost didn't come in.

Since persimmon soap became popular for dealing with the smell of aging, cheap imitations have flooded the marketplaces. They cost less because they skip the persimmon, skip the six weeks of curing, and often borrow Ruth's words, her story and even her face.

To be sure you get the real recipe, buy only from this website. Ruth's persimmon soap is not sold on Amazon, eBay, Walmart or anywhere else, and there are no other sellers.

I could have kept up with them, I suppose. Cheaper oils. Less persimmon. Six weeks of curing cut down to two. My granddaughter even asked me about it. So in March, I locked the door for the last time. When we cleaned out the back room, the racks were still full of bars curing. Twelve hundred, give or take. My persimmon bars, and the gift boxes I'd wrapped for a Mother's Day I wasn't going to have.

I didn't have the heart to throw them out.

My granddaughter said, "Grandma, there are people out there who still want the real thing. Let me find them." So this is her doing. When these are gone, I'm done. My hands aren't what they used to be, and I think I've earned some time in my garden.

P.S. from Emily: Grandma would never say this herself, so I will. Her persimmon bar is the real deal, and those bars are the last ones she'll ever make. We wrap and ship every order from her kitchen table, persimmon bars first, then the gift sets. If it doesn't work for you, email me and I'll refund you, no questions asked. That part was her idea. She said, "Nobody should pay for soap that doesn't work." Once the racks are empty, the store closes.

I'll keep the persimmon tree. It is the one my mother planted from a cutting the year I was born. In October it is covered in fruit, and I'll let it all fall if I feel like it.

If you bought one of those copies and felt foolish, please don't. They fooled plenty of smart people. I'd just like you to try the one they were pretending to be. Thank you for reading all this. — Ruth