When Life Gives You Lemons

 

Sometimes you just get thrown a whole bunch of lemons.  

And I suppose I do mean to use the word, thrown.  Not given.  Not handed.  Thrown.  And sometimes those lemons aren't even for you, yet juggle you do as they come sailing your way - these sky high, mid air, citrusy yellow orbs.  

It's been like that for a while at our house.  Our life with boys, lately, has been spent juggling other peoples lemons.  Aging, ailing parent emergencies, broken bones, brain tumors, delirium, infections, you name it.  Multiple visits to the ER, multiple visits to rehab, multiple conversations with doctors, nurses, and staff at the nursing home.  Balancing visits to parents that are at opposite ends of the city.  Handling all of the details of a barn renovation - for the above mentioned parents.  Juggling contractors, appliance dealers, stove manufacturers, sprinkler companies, fire marshals, the city permitting department, figuring out how to secure a handicap parking spot, talking with landscape companies, tree care companies, and then managing to actually raise the barn floor sixteen inches to accommodate fantasy car parking, while also painting over 200 twenty foot long barn boards, and still attending to the  other thousand minor issues that come along with a giant renovation project like this. Add to this a striking school district and all of the complexities that it holds for everyone in our household.  It's been tough juggling all of these "lemons" in our life, while the real priorities LIKE OUR CHILDREN, ourselves and our careers hang tight until we can return our full attention to them.  

We are now noticing that all of these lemons are making us - especially the youngest and most sensitive among us - a little bit sour.   Which is helpful information in some ways.  The smallest canary in our coal mine has just begun to sing his chirpy-little-tweety-little bird song of alarm.  Which is the warning we needed in order to ask for some help as we wade through the enormity of this moment in time.  And that is what it is -a moment in time.  But an enormous moment, a crescendo really...where everything coming at us is timed so precisely that their peak moments of need are in unison and impossibly challenging.    

Time for lemonade?  You'd think it would be easy to make it from all of these lemons- and we are trying.  But I can attest to the fact that it is a bit like squeezing lemons with a pillow right now.  Not that efficient.    So, instead of lemonade today, perhaps this story will have to do, and perhaps through this collection of words I will be reminded that there is another side.   Perhaps our friends and family will hear the songbird as well.  And hopefully soon, we'll all be drinking a frosted glass of fresh squeezed lemonade, together on the other side of this moment...and both of my parents will be here with us in the barn.