When Life Gives You Lemons, You Investigate

My mailbox is yellow, my best friend calls it a lemon.
I don’t know how I feel about that though,
Does that mean everything in there comes out sour? Maybe.
Because I feel like all that comes out of my mailbox is
Bills and bills and statements and property taxes and blah.
My parents deal with it, but it’s still sour.
No one wants a bill, do they?
Sometimes I wish I knew how to deal with it, because
Bills are what makes them upset, what starts the fighting.
It’s what makes the checks leave the book,
And numbers go down. I know
That bills aren’t good.

So maybe it is a lemon, a sour lemon.
But today I opened it and saw a scruffy brown package,
Dirty at the edges, with my name on it
My name, how special is that? So this changed my thinking
Because my package can’t be sour, it’s too special.
This is the only reason I trek out in the snow and the rain and the wind to my mailbox,
Because I love getting mail.
Well, mail that’s addressed to me.

I open my special brown package,
And I find a ring.
It’s shiny and golden, and fits around my ring finger!
Maybe my mailbox is a lemon, because this here seems to be a lemon seed.
Are the seeds of a lemon sour or sweet? I don’t know, but I’m sure my best friend
Would because she really really loves to taste lemons, and I don’t know why.
Lemons are too sour to eat on their own, but this ring seems like a sweet seed,
A seed that won’t make mom and dad fight.

There is no return address or a note, just this ring, in a
Little envelope with my name on it. And I think that any second
Someone is going to jump out from behind a bush and get down on one knee and propose to me
Right next to my lemon mailbox!
Thinking about that makes me giggle, because I realize that of course that isn’t going to happen.

So I bring my lemon seed ring into my house,
Which is green by the way.
I sit on my also green couch and call my best friend, the one who thinks my mailbox is a lemon.
And I tell her all about my lemon seed ring.
I ask her what exactly she thinks it means
And I ask her to explain why she calls my mailbox a lemon,
And to be specific because I need answers.

She tells me all about the Chinese fables, which she loves.
It’s her answer to everything.
She tells me about this idea she really loves. This idea that two souls are connected
By an imaginary red string tied around a boys thumb and a girls pinky finger,
And that sometimes the string gets tangled and knotted,
But never ever in their whole lives
Would it tear or break.
And I told her that that was the most romantic story I had ever heard.
It really gave me hope for my parents,
Because maybe their string is knotted right now,
But if they are connected, it can never ever break,
Right?
That’s what I was thinking, but instead I asked about
What in the world this Chinese fable had to do with me finding a golden
Wedding ring in my lemon mailbox.

She said that someone must be in love with me.
They must think that I’m connected to them with a red string, and they want to marry me.
And as much as I liked that idea, I told her that was just not possible,
Because no one had jumped out of the bushes to come marry me!
So it must be something else.

I decided to call my older brother,
And when he picked up the phone I told him about my lemon seed ring.
And he said that someone must be pranking me with my golden wedding ring. That it’s a trap,
Or a mistake, a wrong address.
I tell him all about what my best friend said, and about the romantic Chinese fable.
He says not to get too excited,
That no one could possibly want to marry me at such a young age.
His voice started to get all panicky and fast,
He said to throw the ring away. I’m too young to get married.
I roll my eyes at him, even though he can’t see me, because he’s very protective.
Of course I’m not going to get married this young.

I tell him very convinced not to worry, that I will not be getting married anytime soon.
And then I ask him if he thinks mom and dad are connected by a red string.
I can hear him sigh through the phone,
He says he doesn’t know, and he calls me kiddo, my nickname.
He says he hopes so,
He says everything will be just fine,
As long as we stick together.
And after a few minutes of silence, I tell him I have very important investigating to do,
And that I have to go,
He laughs and we hang up.

I decide to examine the ring just like a detective would,
So I grab my tiny magnifying glass and look at the golden lemon seed ring.
It has a few dents and it’s a little scruffy,
But I still think it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Then I try to look at fingerprints on it
By doing what the people in the movies do, so I get out some flour because
It’s the only white powder I have. And I plunk that ring into the flour
But the only thing that happens is the flour goes everywhere
And now my face is white with flour and the lemon seed ring is too!
I wipe it off and decide to forget the fingerprints.

Instead I think about everything I know about rings and lemon seeds
And I realize that seeds grow into bigger things.
So I take out a little shovel from the shed
And I go out to my lemon mailbox and dig a little hole next to it.
I put that lemon seed ring right into the ground and sprinkle some water on it

I go inside because I am so excited that my lemon seed ring is going to
Grow into something great. And I know I can’t wait and watch,
Because then it won’t grow.
I wait so long on the couch that I fall asleep for a little while,
But I don’t remember how long. When I wake up
My mom is there and she is telling me to come outside because she has something
Brand shiny new to show me. I am so excited because I love new things,
And when I go outside I see
A beautiful, red mailbox right where my ugly lemon mailbox was!

I start dancing around because my lemon seed ring must have been an apple seed ring
And it must have been magical and grown into this beautiful apple mailbox.
I dance around because I can’t wait to tell my best friend
And my older brother that I solved the mystery.
I dance around because I am just so so happy;
Good things come out of apple mailboxes
Instead of bad sour things like
Lemons, and bills, and numbers leaving, and fighting and conflict.
I dance around because maybe with this brand new apple mailbox,
Good, sweet things, will replace the sour.

BlueEyedRose

VT

YWP Alumni

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