. . . Make Lemonade!

Growing up in California with a wonderfully prolific lemon tree in our backyard meant that we made lots of lemonade. It kind of reminds me of the part from “Forrest Gump” where Bubba talks about everything that you can do with shrimp. We not only made lemonade, but we also made lemon bars, lemon pie, lemon bread, lemon cake, lemon sauce, lemon cookies, lemon cheesecake, lemon chicken, etc., etc. I have lots of good memories of lemons, so I couldn’t quite understand my someone wouldn’t WANT life to hand them lemons.

And then it happened. I fell in LOVE the summer following my senior year in high school, and the schmuck broke my heart a few months later while I was attending BYU. Suddenly, the words had special meaning to me, and not just because I was in the “depths of despair” (line from Anne of Green Gables). Trying to help ease the pain that I was keeping bottled up inside, my perceptive mother penned the phrase to me in a sweet letter. It was a special moment between mother and daughter–a mother who, despite being as tough as nails, reached out to her fragile daughter who simply didn’t want to grow up, who just wanted to stay at home with her mommy and daddy for the rest of her life and stop the clock and not have anything change.

But I did grow up and, although lots of things have changed in my life, my love for lemons hasn’t.

Fast forward eighteen years.  Ariana and I have been juicing lemons from the trees now growing in big pots in our kitchen. I hope that she, too, will learn to love lemons . . . that I will learn to effectively reach out to her when she needs me . . . and that she will learn to make lemonade with life’s lemons.

p.s. The trees will be staying inside year-round, and Bryan is in charge of the “artificial insemination process” next spring. We’ll keep you posted on how that goes.