I’m All Out of Lemons
And other writing challenges at my lemonade stand
My daughter asked me if she could make a lemonade stand.
She’s eight and wanted to make the lemonade herself.
I said okay and set about folding the laundry and watched her mix ingredients from afar.
Then I helped her haul the plastic kids’ picnic table down to the bottom of the driveway. She wanted to do everything on her own, so I found some yard work that needed tending and listened for cars. I would come down to the driveway and be on standby if she needed help counting change.
One man, in particular, seemed thrilled by her entrepreneurial spirit, and we stood chatting. He made a point of not asking for change back.
She was a hit. She made $15 in an hour and sold out of lemonade.
She asked if she could make more. “But surely we’re almost out of lemons and lemon juice,” I said.
“We had lemons?” she asked.
“Well, I thought we did because you made lemonade. At least there was lemon juice.”
“That’s a great idea, mom! I’ll use lemon juice this time,” she said.
“Wait…what did you use last time?” I asked.
“Ummm….water and sugar.”
“But the sign said lemonade.”
She shrugged. “But we didn’t have any lemons, mom. So I made due. Just like you always say.”
“Wait…you just sold $15 of sugar water!”
I started laughing. If I could have, I would have made her return the money. But the customers were long gone.
This isn’t really about lemonade or parenting. I woke up thinking about this memory because it’s exactly how I feel about writing this week:
I have no lemons!
I have none of the thing that makes the thing…you know what I mean?
I still set up my lemonade stand: every morning, I wake up at 5:00 am and write until 6:30 am when the kids begin stirring.
Some of my essays are taking longer, and some of them wrote themselves right into the top drawer, never to be seen again. My creative brain is vying for more time. My lemons are taking longer to grow than usual.
And no, I’m not going to sell sugar water.
Key Message: I just have to slow down. Give the process more time. Not let the algorithm boss me around.
I submitted an essay to a literary journal six months ago and I’m still waiting to hear back. Waiting a couple of days to publish on Medium is not the end of the world.
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