Lemonade and Pearls
One long summer day, a string of fake pearls turned into a lesson on kindness.
My dad was a fair, practical man, with a great sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye. He worked two full-time jobs — farming by day and repairing planes at Dover Air Force Base at night. He faced constant pressure to keep the family financially afloat. Leisure was a luxury he rarely experienced.
On our family farm, everyone worked. My younger sister and I were tasked with simpler chores — like dusting and folding laundry. These jobs offered time for play, and we were often concocting some Tom Sawyer-like plans of making money.
We thought selling things would be easy. At five and six years old, who could resist two adorable urchins, front teeth missing, peddling anything?
Our new idea was to do what every red-blooded American kid in the ’60s did: sell lemonade. As this was our first public venture, we didn’t know we faced a difficult obstacle to success: location, location, location.
Our home was situated five miles from the nearest town, then another mile down a gravel road, and then a tenth of a mile up a dusty lane. Not exactly prime retail real estate.
With unsteady hands, we mixed frozen lemonade in a large Mason jar and added ice. Cold yellow liquid splashed on the table and dripped to the floor as we stirred. My sister steadied me up on the counter, where I teetered in bare feet, grabbing some stale Fig Newtons from the cupboard.
A jug of juice and some cookies didn’t seem like the path to riches.
We had a brilliant idea. Jewelry! We raided our cigar box of childhood treasures — Cracker Jack peanut whistles, plastic pearls that had seen better days, and my sister’s tarnished Brownie pins.
Adding a small three-legged table to the load, we struggled to pull our overfilled, hand-me-down Red Ryder wagon through the dirt.
At the end of the lane, we immediately started fighting.
“Why didn’t you bring napkins?” I asked in exasperation, my frizzy ponytail wagging.
“You didn’t tell me to get them!” she retorted, pushing me squarely in the stomach. Apparently, preschool had yet to add anger management as part of the curriculum.
Though eighteen months younger than me, my sister was like a welterweight fighter — skinny, wiry, and tough as nails. To avoid further pain and humiliating defeat, I dropped it.
We finished setting up and our makeshift lemonade stand was open for business!
Like many business start-ups, we waited with excitement and anticipation for our first customer.
And waited. And waited.
The sun hung high in the sky, creating shimmering mirages across the fields. Dad was tilling a field in the distance, steering the old green tractor up and down rows of soybeans. We could see a stream of dark smoke suspended in the stifling air, signaling his location.
We ate cookies. We drank lemonade. We waited some more.
Hot, tired, and bored, we were ready to give up. The puttering of Dad’s tractor engine caught our attention. He had unhitched the tiller and was headed our way perched high on a bouncing metal seat. We waved at him gleefully, our tiny arms stretched high.
He doffed his sweat-stained ball cap and grinned. Dusty and dirty, beads of perspiration merged, creating small rivers in the grime on his face. He hit the clutch with his cracked leather boot, muscled the gear shift, and turned off the engine.
“Hey, Daddy!” we shouted excitedly.
He jumped down, hugging each of us as we squealed in delight.
“Let me see here, ladies,” he said in a playfully serious voice. “What are we selling?”
Dad leaned forward and surveyed the table: maybe two half-eaten Fig Newtons and a glass of warm lemonade remained.
“Daddy, we have lemonade and cookies,” I said.
“And jwlry!” my sister added, her version of the word having no vowels.
Wiping the sweat off his forehead with a white cotton handkerchief, he said, “I’d like two cookies, a glass of lemonade, and I think that pretty pearl necklace.”
Jumping up and down, hearts pounding, we filled his order.
“That will be fifty cents, please,” I proudly stated, extending my hand.
He fished into the pocket of his dusty work pants and pulled out two sweaty dollar bills. “That should cover it,” he said with a wink, “Keep the change!”
“Thank you, Daddy!” As he bent down, we hugged him again, tasting his salty, whiskered cheek with our baby kisses. He chuckled and hoisted himself back onto the tractor. Back to work.
In hindsight, Dad’s purchase was more than a simple act of kindness; it was a glimpse of his very nature. And he left that as a legacy for me and my sisters.
Like most families, my four sisters and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. Five girls, two tiny bedrooms — kindness was optional, but sharing closets was not. Even though we got into a few hair pulling tiffs, our relationships were tightly threaded within the white-shingled farmhouse down that lonely lane.
Decades later, we embrace wildly different political and religious beliefs —like rival United Nations delegates, only without a moderator to call time-out. Over the years, life tossed each of us more than a few lemons.
Despite our differences and obstacles, a recent rallying point for my sisters and me was my cancer diagnosis.
Like pearls on a strand, my sisters connected with me through daily doses of kindness. Cards, calls, texts, gifts — precious gestures that encircled me with hope and resilience.
Dad acted. My sisters acted.
Maybe that is a message for us.
Today, our world seems sharper, harder, more bitter — as though we are constantly bracing for Wile E. Coyote’s anvil. We feel untethered if unable to influence outcomes in our lives. In our discomfort, we may choose retreat: cocooning and insulating ourselves.
Perhaps the remedy for feeling powerless is to take deliberate action: reach out, push against the safe confines of our comfort zone, find purposeful acts of simple kindness, string together connections in a disconnected time. Even if it is inconvenient — or controversial.
Dad bought warm lemonade and fake pearls. What he gave back was priceless.
Read about a lesson on resilience.
Finding hope.
Has someone ever shown you unexpected kindness? Tell me about it comments. I promise not to charge for stale cookies!
