You may think this column, entitled “Lemon Day,” will be glum. Not so. Some days, when you think it is sure to be a real lemon, something odd happens. Others make it happen, and you … just smile.
For decades, I worked in DC, offices near the US Capitol. I found myself asking hard questions, even of myself, some days struggling to maintain my humor and the idealism taught in rural Maine.
The world, well beyond DC, is mixed up. It tries hard to jade us, persuade us, turn us into cynics, make us give up hope, faith, strength, idealism, the ability to see clearly, stay flexible and patient without loss of principle, show respect together with resolve, be neither ideologue nor willow in the wind.
Simply put, some days the world can suck the humor right out of us, and hope is hard work. Some days, you bump into other people who are at that task, and need reminding, some lightness in dark times.
So, in an effort to cheer myself and the office, I one day bought a small lemon tree, and put it by the window, a happy distraction, although lemon trees are not native to either DC or Maine.
Without saying so, the lemon tree was my little way of offering hope, saying think out of the box, stay upbeat, and never know what could happen. We define the world we live in; it does not define us.
The idea was not madness, any more than people bringing plants inside for winter, admiring green and colors generated by a geranium or Christmas cactus in winter.
As weeks went by, my little lemon tree got taller, and generated buds. I made a point of watering it, assuring the soil stayed damp, and temperatures in the office did not get too low.
Others in the relatively open office, with lots of interaction, would comment. “What are you expecting, lemons?” They would playfully rib me, a crazy Maine kid, but I did.
Time passed and the tree seemed to like the digs, but I worried still about it and watered it a lot. Buds appeared. A few fell off, and now and then a leaf drooped, but the tree seemed good, just no lemons.
The time came for a vacation, two weeks, so I asked colleagues to water the tree, and they said they would. On my return, people seemed happy to have me back, which was nice, but I was soon head down.
Just before lunch, my eyes surveyed the surroundings and caught sight of the tree. Whoa, the lemon tree!
Where I had left it with ambivalent, possibly unhappy buds, it was now beaming, filled – I mean filled – with lemons! I was ecstatic, never happier. I was also proud of the little lemon tree, those big lemons.
Unable to contain myself, I shouted to friends, to come look. The tree no one thought would grow lemons was awash in them, bright yellow.
“Really?” I heard one shout. “Seriously?” asked another, as they turned corners, and wound their way into my office to see the glorious, fruit-filled lemon tree.
“Can you believe it?” I said, proud as any fruit tree owner, feeling rather vindicated as my doubting friends thought the tree was doomed. For several minutes, we all stood there, admiring. Amazing, I thought, how incredible nature is, tree to buds, buds to flower, flowers to fruit, full-sized lemons.
That is when one of my friends, trying not to, folded over, trying not to laugh. Another followed until my friends were all quietly – then not so quietly – chuckling.
One said, “Um, Bobby, go take a closer look.” I did, at once startled, deflated, amused, amazed, and suddenly laughing as hard as I have ever laughed in my professional life.
My good friends had endured my silent hope for lemons until they could not take it any longer. When I was away, the little tree had lost all its buds, overwatered.
Rather than let disaster stand, they took matters into their own hands, made things right, better than right, to fulfill my hopes, and gambled I would understand their intent.
With extraordinary care, they had gone to a grocery store, bought a dozen plump lemons, then inserted an unbent paperclip into each one, carefully hanging it on my little lemon tree, now full of lemons.
We laughed so hard, me more than anyone, our ribs hurt, and then just admired that little lemon factory, there by the window, filled with the local grocer’s best lemons. No tree ever lifted more spirits.
That ruse got trotted out, retold to a dozen clients, who all laughed as hard as we did, that tree lighting endless faces. Lemon day? Well yes, or hardly, or rather best lemon day ever!
Some days, when you think it is sure to be a real lemon, something odd happens. Others make it happen, and you … just smile, unexpected lightness in the dark. For the record, this winter, I got another one – which has yet to bear any fruit but is being watered with great discretion. I have told no one.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
