Sometimes you need life to give you some lemons

After my initial days of intense COVID-19 exhaustion began to ebb, I was grateful to get from my bedroom to the kitchen without having to stop for a nap en route. Except that was the day I ran out of lemons. I finally had enough energy to make myself a cup of lemon tea, and the only thing in my fruit bowl was an overripe banana. I definitely was in no shape to make banana bread.

The garden window was being bombarded by shooting darts of rain preparing to morph into hail in the frigid temps of the uncanny California blizzard. My phone was shouting flood alerts and the TV news was warning of power outages. My throat was sore and my head hurt. I really needed a fresh lemon for my tea.

Ironically, there’s a tree loaded with lemons in my backyard. But you have to walk down steps to get to it, and I was still too shaky on my feet to negotiate stairs in the freezing rain.

A plan began to formulate. Channeling my inner Shirley Maclaine, I knew if I wanted to get to the fruit of the tree I would have to go “out on a limb,” as she wrote in her book of the same name. The top of my lemon tree is accessible from the open side of the covered deck. The fruit is sparser there though sometimes reachable.

Through the French doors in my office that open onto the deck, I could see blobs of yellow but couldn’t determine where they were. Wrapping my 35-year-old tan trenchcoat around my bathrobe, I pulled up the hood and stepped out into the unforgiving California cold.

Feeling hopeful, I had taken my clippers with me. It paid off. Hope can do that.

Three plump lemons, glistening little moons with raindrops tap dancing on them, hung invitingly from the treetop just at my eye level. Two shared a stem. One clip and they were mine. Soon they were sliced and bathed in a hot cup of tea. I touched the cup to my cheek and breathed in the lemon warmth.

In a chaotic world, I savor small triumphs.