The Lemon Tree Doesn’t Rush
Reflections on grief, healing, and the possibility of blooming again.
We’ve heard the saying a thousand times: when life gives you lemons… But what if the focus wasn’t just on making lemonade? What if it was on the lemon itself, the small, golden fruit that takes time, care, and the right climate to thrive?
My parents were Italian, and in Italy, lemons mean more than sourness or misfortune. They represent brightness. Nourishment. Generosity. The lemon tree is tended with patience, its blossoms nurtured by sun and soft hands. And when it blooms, it releases a fragrance so sweet you almost forget the bitterness it holds.
I’ve been thinking lately: What would it mean to tend to myself like that? With the same care, the same faith that something fragrant might come again? What if joy, like a lemon, needs both time and tenderness to fully ripen?
This essay is me watering the soil. Watching. Waiting. And wondering if something good might still grow.
Maybe joy is still possible for me
There was a time, maybe not too long ago, maybe in some distant, untouchable version of me, when I noticed things. A crack of sunlight on a tiled floor. The strange, miraculous timing of a falling leaf. A stranger’s laugh that sounded like a song.
That part of me feels… misplaced. Not gone exactly. Just blurred by the weight of too much grief and too much over-thinking, by names I no longer say out loud, by absences that echo louder than presence.
I’ve been wondering: Can I still feel joy? Not the forced kind. Not the tidy “choose happiness” kind. But the kind that arrives unannounced, catches in your throat, and makes you feel, just for a moment, like life is bearable again. Maybe even beautiful.
But how do you reach for joy when everything inside wants to fold inward?
The old answers don’t quite fit anymore. I used to think joy was something you stumbled into. Now I wonder if it’s something you have to build, quietly, without hope of applause. Like stacking stones in a river for no reason other than to see them stand.
I don’t know if I’m ready. Some days, I’m not even sure I want to be. There’s a strange comfort in familiar sorrow. I’m getting used to it. But maybe that’s the trick: joy doesn’t replace grief. It doesn’t cancel it out. It just flickers beside it.
What if joy isn’t the opposite of pain, but the companion that holds its hand?
I’m still here. Still asking questions I can’t answer. Still watching for light through the cracks. That has to count for something.
Teaching myself to notice again
So I’ll need to start paying attention. Not with grand expectations, but with something closer to curiosity.
The way light slants at 4 p.m. The sound of a kettle just before it boils. The scent of rain on pavement. Small things, mostly. But they ask nothing of me. They will just arrive, and for a moment, they will hold me.
Maybe that’s what joy is now. Not a crescendo, but a thread. A way of staying tethered to the moment in front of me, even if that moment is quiet, or strange, or still touched by sorrow.
Some days I still feel like a room with the lights off. But even then, I’ll find myself humming. Or reaching for a line I once loved. And I think: maybe I’m not completely lost. Maybe I’m just learning how to look again.
What would it mean for me to say yes to life again?
Not loudly.
Not triumphantly.
But gently, like opening a window after a long winter.
Would it mean letting go of the old shape of joy, the one I used to know, and allowing something new to grow?
Would it mean accepting that grief doesn’t have to leave for something beautiful to arrive?
Would it mean believing that noticing a birdsong or letting sunlight warm my face doesn’t betray what I’ve lost, but honours it?
I don’t know what saying yes really looks like. But I miss being surprised. I miss being moved.
So maybe I say yes in fragments. With a touch. A breath. A lemon blossom in spring.
Maybe it starts with not turning away from what still stirs something in me.
My fragrant possibility
Maybe joy isn’t something we chase down or resurrect. Maybe it’s something we make space for. Like sun filtering through a half-closed curtain, warming the floor without asking for notice.
I think about the lemon tree again, how it never rushes. How it leans into light even after heavy rains. It doesn’t bloom because the world is easy. It blooms because that’s what it was made to do, in its own time, with enough care.
So maybe I’ll keep tending to myself in small ways. Watering the soil. Letting grief stay, but not letting it choke out the possibility of something fragrant.
I don’t know what’s coming. But I’m listening. Watching. Waiting.
And if one morning I wake to find something sweet blooming beside the ache, well… maybe I’ll call that joy.
