Waterlemons

     Life can be a real kick in the head sometimes. I'll work so hard at something and be so stringent in self discipline, and yet - it will all fall apart or amount to nothing. Lately I've found that if, in these moments, I refuse to collapse...if I remain just as tough as I had been...if I force myself to look around instead of down...if I skip the high tailing it in retreat, and if I reject that dark, dank, despairing place of selfish isolation - I find that there is aid - and also "ade" to be made from even the most sour & bitter of lemons. Even when they are dealt with a low blow, and even when they come from a hard-losing hand.  

     I make ade from a memories, and happy, lucky stories, and by listening to people at times when I want to block everyone out. I always find aid when I give it to other people - especially during the times I feel least able to help. When I leap and I manage to land beyond myself, I find ade flowing by the gallon - from sources undiscovered but now found. They are sublime. 

     When my daughter was tiny she would mix up certain words, like tomato and potato, and others of like kinds. My favorite was a brand new fruit she had started growing - along those beautiful little vines in her mind. 

     At the diner, when they serve water there's usually a lemon perched on the glass. She didn't like anything touching her precious water and would often protest to me with the waitress already in mid-pour, pleading "no water lemon no water lemon" and if she spoke sentences yet, I guess she'd continue with the words "on mine." 

     One day when she was a little older, we were in the supermarket and she requested we buy a strange fruit. "Can we get a water lemon mommy?" "Sure, but why?" I had replied, figuring she meant the water lemon from the diner. "You hate water with lemon, baby - why do you want me to buy it?" Her face scrunched up and I saw that a small little light went on, but she asked again, in a voice that was a little less sure. This time she pointed as she said the words a little closer together, "Waterlemon, mommy?" So I turned, and looked, and recognized the verbal mismatch she had made in her brain.

     "Oh! Watermelon! You mean you want a watermelon!" I exclaimed, as I broke into a big smile. The excitement bloomed nearly instantly in her eyes, and her facial expression so quickly matched mine - it was the absolute pinnacle of the beauty of young life - brand new, and just learning this world. 

     "Ya!" she said. "Waterlemon!" Which, for some reason, I found hilarious, and erupted into my maniacally loud laugh. Now, this turned a few heads in that staid environment, among the mid-day supermarket clientele. These were mostly slow-moving retirees who shop with coupons, and always according to a strict routine. This reaction, of course, she loved to no end. "Waterlemon!" She exclaimed louder, and then repeatedly, with ever-more enthusiasm & pride. "Waterlemon! Waterlemon! WATERLEMON!" Naturally, this prompted more cackles from me, and more stares from the slow-moving oldies. And this made her laugh, and bubble and spurt, among her exclamations of this imaginary fruit's name. Eventually I lost my breath and she couldn't stop baby-giggling at this cacophonous spectacle of impossibly loud laughter, chortles, snorts, and outraged senior citizens. 

     I don't remember how we got out of that giggle-fest, but I thought of the misnomer today and smiled. Waterlemonade was my aid today, amongst others. Here's hoping we all make a ton of that stuff.