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Description
Bicyclists were passing me on both sides, and I wasn't paying much attention until suddenly a woman rode past wearing some sort of lemon perfume.  And in a split second I was in one of those Proustian olfactory flashbacks, twenty-five or so years before, in the kitchen of one of my aunts, with her many children, my cousins, on a hot summer's day.  I was the eldest, at eight or so, and my aunt and uncle had just gotten divorced.  She was sad and worried, and I think to soothe herself and help her wounded ego, she had done a little retail therapy: she'd gone to the store and spent several dollars on a lemonade-making contraption.

Of course, it goes without saying that to make lemonade, all you need is a pitcher, a lemon-juice squeezer, ice cubes, water, lemons, and sugar.  That's all.  Oh, and a long spoon.  But my aunt was a little depressed, and this lemonade-making thing must have seemed like something that would be fun and would maybe hydrate her life a little, filling her desiccated spirit with nice, cool, sweet lemonade.  The contraption consisted of a glass pitcher, with a lemon squeezer that fit on top and that had a holding tank for the lemon juice.  What you did was to fill the pitcher with water and ice cubes and sugar, then put the squeezer - with its holding tank - on top, squeeze a bunch of lemons, then pour the lemon juice from the holding tank into the pitcher.  Finally, you got your long spoon and stirred.  The lemon googe and seeds stayed on top in the juice squeezer.  The whole thing was very efficient, but if you thought about it too long, totally stupid, too.

So there we were in the kitchen, the five cousins and me, crowded around her at the sink as she proudly made us lemonade.  She put the cold water in the pitcher, added ice cubes, lots of sugar, put the juicer lid on top, squeezed a dozen lemons, and then began to take glasses down from the cupboards.  Wait! we older ones wanted to cry out, you haven't poured in the lemon juice.  Stop! Mistakes are being made!  But she got out jelly glasses, plastic glasses, a couple of brilliant aluminum glasses, and poured seven servings.  There we were, six anxious black-belt co-dependents, unable to breathe, with a longing for everything to be Okay and for her not to feel sad anymore.  She raised her glass to us as a toast, and we all took sips of our sugary ice water, and my aunt's hands were so lemony from cutting and squeezing all those lemons that she must have tasted lemon.  We all stared at her helplessly as we drank our sugar water, then smiled and raised our glasses like we were doing a soft-drink commercial, and held them out for more.

I perfectly remembered, there on the salt marsh, the crummy linoleum on my aunt's kitchen floor, graying beige speckled with black, and how it wore away to all black near the sink, and how at its most worn place, rotten wood showed through.  And how all those cousins, some so young they must have thought ice-cold sugar water was about as good as the getting got, stood at the sink with us older kids, in a ring around my aunt.  And how close I felt to them all, how much a part of the wheel.

It touches me so deeply, the poignancy of the crummy linoleum, of my aunt's pain and her pride in her lemonade-making machine, of all the ways in which we try to comfort ourselves, of her wanting to make us better lemonade, of us wanting to make her better, the enthusiasm with which we drank and held out our glasses, as if we were hoisting steins at Oktoberfest.

Description
Bicyclists were passing me on both sides, and I wasn't paying much attention until suddenly a woman rode past wearing some sort of lemon perfume.  And in a split second I was in one of those Proustian olfactory flashbacks, twenty-five or so years before, in the kitchen of one of my aunts, with her many children, my cousins, on a hot summer's day.  I was the eldest, at eight or so, and my aunt and uncle had just gotten divorced.  She was sad and worried, and I think to soothe herself and help her wounded ego, she had done a little retail therapy: she'd gone to the store and spent several dollars on a lemonade-making contraption.

Of course, it goes without saying that to make lemonade, all you need is a pitcher, a lemon-juice squeezer, ice cubes, water, lemons, and sugar.  That's all.  Oh, and a long spoon.  But my aunt was a little depressed, and this lemonade-making thing must have seemed like something that would be fun and would maybe hydrate her life a little, filling her desiccated spirit with nice, cool, sweet lemonade.  The contraption consisted of a glass pitcher, with a lemon squeezer that fit on top and that had a holding tank for the lemon juice.  What you did was to fill the pitcher with water and ice cubes and sugar, then put the squeezer - with its holding tank - on top, squeeze a bunch of lemons, then pour the lemon juice from the holding tank into the pitcher.  Finally, you got your long spoon and stirred.  The lemon googe and seeds stayed on top in the juice squeezer.  The whole thing was very efficient, but if you thought about it too long, totally stupid, too.

So there we were in the kitchen, the five cousins and me, crowded around her at the sink as she proudly made us lemonade.  She put the cold water in the pitcher, added ice cubes, lots of sugar, put the juicer lid on top, squeezed a dozen lemons, and then began to take glasses down from the cupboards.  Wait! we older ones wanted to cry out, you haven't poured in the lemon juice.  Stop! Mistakes are being made!  But she got out jelly glasses, plastic glasses, a couple of brilliant aluminum glasses, and poured seven servings.  There we were, six anxious black-belt co-dependents, unable to breathe, with a longing for everything to be Okay and for her not to feel sad anymore.  She raised her glass to us as a toast, and we all took sips of our sugary ice water, and my aunt's hands were so lemony from cutting and squeezing all those lemons that she must have tasted lemon.  We all stared at her helplessly as we drank our sugar water, then smiled and raised our glasses like we were doing a soft-drink commercial, and held them out for more.

I perfectly remembered, there on the salt marsh, the crummy linoleum on my aunt's kitchen floor, graying beige speckled with black, and how it wore away to all black near the sink, and how at its most worn place, rotten wood showed through.  And how all those cousins, some so young they must have thought ice-cold sugar water was about as good as the getting got, stood at the sink with us older kids, in a ring around my aunt.  And how close I felt to them all, how much a part of the wheel.

It touches me so deeply, the poignancy of the crummy linoleum, of my aunt's pain and her pride in her lemonade-making machine, of all the ways in which we try to comfort ourselves, of her wanting to make us better lemonade, of us wanting to make her better, the enthusiasm with which we drank and held out our glasses, as if we were hoisting steins at Oktoberfest.