It’s slippery and dangerous
(… or, What do lemons and sobriety have in common?)
Let’s say you want some lemons.
There’s a beautiful lemon tree in the park near your house. It’s tall, lots of branches, many lemons.
You want them.
You see other people walking around with lemons and you have no idea how they got them, but you want them.
Desperately.
You wake at night thinking, why am I living like this, without the lemons that I need in my life. Why is my life so miserable. If only I could have some lemons, I’m sure I’d feel better.
You don’t ask any of the people with lemons how they got theirs. That would be embarrassing. Everyone magically seems to know how to do this.
Not you.
You go to the park near your house, and you gaze up, longingly, right there at the tippy-top of the tree. So. Many. Lemons.
You can nearly taste them. You want to make lemonade, at least to begin, but the truth is you have so many other things you’d like to do with your lemons, once you get them.
Lemon meringue pie, lemon bars, lemon cheesecake. Lemon-dill pull-apart bread, cranberry lemon scones, and blueberry lemon muffins made with plain yogurt (or sour cream or crème fraîche).
There’s a whole world you could build, if only you had some of these fucking lemons.
Staring up at the tree, the tippy-top lemons, you think, OK, fine. I have to climb the tree. I’ll read a book about trees. That should be enough.
You head to the library.
You read books, a lot of books, oh so many books.
You don’t ask anyone how they got their lemons, of course. You just gaze and pine for the thing you want: Lemons.
After reading a promising book by an expert about how to scale a tree, you go back to the park.
This is it. Must climb the tree.
You wrap your arms around the tree trunk, lift one leg up to find a place to hitch your foot, hoist yourself up … and then you slide right off.
You take a step back, your hands sticky and your feet sliding around on the grass.
You can see now what you couldn’t see before. The tree trunk is covered in a slippery wax.
OK, I’ll get a bit dirty, you think, but it’ll be fine.
You try again. Arms wrapped around, leading with the other foot this time, and the greasy, waxed tree trunk gives you no purchase. Nothing to hold on to.
You squeeze really tightly.
But it ain’t happening.
Tears of frustration. So. Many. Tears.
If I had lemons, my life would be different. But the tree trunk is slippery, and dangerous, and I can’t see how to do it.
You try harder. Again. But it doesn’t work.
You wait for a few hours, sitting there under the tree. Nothing. No ideas.
You doze off, under the tree, and sleep there, slick and greased with tree wax from head to toe.
Everyone can see that you’ve been trying to climb the lemon tree — unsuccessfully — and you don’t care any more who sees you, or who knows. Fuck them. They don’t know how hard this is.
Just as the sun sets, you wake to see a small group of folks come over, with smiles and shared jokes.
They have a large brown thing between them. What is that? It’s some kind of contraption, you’ve never seen anything like it.
The group approaches you, and they nod kindly. Then they brace this big brown stick-thing against the tree, and while two of them hold it up, one girl puts her hands on the rungs and lifts herself up. It’s magic really. One hand, one foot. Then the other hand, the other foot.
Up and up she goes.
The girl, now at the top (she works as a judge in real life) pulls off a few lemons, hands them down. One of the guys at the bottom (he’s an anesthesiologist) pulls out a big cloth bag from his backpack, and they take turns filling the bags. More bags appear. Lots of bags of lemons. All the things you can do with those lemons.
This is so exciting! Will they give me some?
You’re sitting right there, but you’re afraid to ask.
The judge girl, she sees you, and she drops one lemon right at your feet.
You pick it up. Hold it close to your face.
You can smell the sweet fragrance. You stick your thumbnail into the skin and breathe in.
It smells like possibility.
“You’ve never seen a ladder before?” asks the anesthesiologist.
“No,” you whisper.
“You see someone with what you want, it’s OK to ask them how they got it,” he says, and then turns back to his friends.
Now here you are. You’ve seen what you want. You’re not sure of all of the specifics, and it probably is NOT as easy as it looks.
The tree trunk is waxed and slippery.
And you risk sitting at its base for too long, while you wait to figure it out.
You’re exhausted from trying harder.
Maybe it’s time to try different.
“Can you show me how to climb?” you whisper, a lump in your throat.
Thanks for reading. Can you click on the little ‘clap’ picture? 👏🏼 Helps people find the stuff I write. Merci.
Belle Robertson, sober 9 years, blogs and writes and records free sober audios. She has been sober penpals with 3,321 people. She works as a text designer, a baker & caterer, and as a sober coach. She thinks that lemon meringue pie is the best dessert. Hands down. This blurb current as of July 2021.
