The Lemonade Stand

It is not often that the first meeting of a stranger cements itself in my memory. But with him, it was distinct. It was as if I saw him and my subconscious said, “Remember this, this person will mean something to you”.

That summer, I saw him at the corner register, very tall and blonde. At this point in my bagel shop career I truly felt as though I had met or at least seen everyone in our small town at least once. I stopped noticing strangers, so to be extra aware of this one was abnormal. I remember the order, three lemonades in a drink carrier. I found myself slightly nervous, working up the nerve to cross the threshold between kitchen and hardwood to deliver them. I even remember the first words I spoke, “Sorry about the lid on that one”. Our hands touched in the transferring of the carrier and I noted the kindness in his eyes, assuring me it was no problem. He left and I was aware of it. 

In the following months, he started to come in consistently in the afternoons after his shifts, sometimes with his brother. Never for food, always for lemonade, and possibly for conversation. It became standard practice to speak greetings to them over the tall side counter as I made their drinks. I’m not sure that a proper introduction was ever made, I just slowly began to know him. Pieces of our lives were shared over that wall in short installments, and I began to look forward to the exchanges. 

Notably, this period of my life was tumultuous. Growing pains and guy problems ruled my emotions and I was very unsettled in my purpose and lack of fulfillment. Depression settled in quickly alongside the monotony of working a draining 7-3 food service position, and I struggled with wanting more but being unable to believe I was capable of whatever that was. I was searching, never aware of what I was searching for. I found myself in a very vulnerable place that would endure. These little moments with him during my work week very innocently became a light in the midst of the gray monotony. 

“Would you hang out with me sometime?”

It was the week after Thanksgiving, officially Christmas season. I made the brisk-fully cold walk from my car into Starbucks where he was waiting for me. Above coffee, we exchanged the details we didn’t have time for over the restaurant counter. He was not from here, he moved states to temporarily live with his brother due to recent difficult circumstances. He was in a bad place, trying to find his footing again. He needed connection possibly more than I did. And I still remember the way it felt that day, as if we were old friends meeting for the first time in a while. 

We drove to Walmart and walked aimlessly, like small town legends do. I still have the stuffed animal that was bought and handed to me in a plastic bag. In the cold, he opened the door and offered me a seat in the old 4Runner I would begin to look for on my drives in months to come. I will never forget his multiple attempts at starting the engine, which proved one after another to be futile. He rested his head on the steering wheel and we laughed together. He then grabbed my hand in playful desperation, and said “Chloe, please hang out with me again”. This is something I am sure I will remember forever. It was shocking, I had never experienced being sought so openly and genuinely. I look back on this purely sweet moment with fondness, it can never be exactly replicated. It is frozen in my timeline as a bright spot in the darkness. 

After that, we met a few more times. We took walks in the park in the cold, got coffee, sat to talk about cliché things like our dreams, and fears, and bad experiences with love. Remembering these moments feels like watching a montage scene from a movie. During these talks, he lent me a lot of confidence I had never had in myself. I showed him my art and shared my interests, and he told me I should start my own business or go to school and work towards a goal. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn’t have a good answer. Because of these conversations, I began to want to find it. He told me that I was capable of so much, if I could just find it within myself to overcome my fear. One of the only pictures I have of him was taken during this conversation, when he grabbed my dirty high top by the heel and asked if I wore a kids size 4. 

It is harder for me to write about the first time I went wrong in it all. I was so lonely, to the point that he was enough to keep me going for a while. But I quickly became aware of how selfish this was, and of the fact that I would inevitably lose the connection we shared. He had visited me at my church in effort to meet my family, and I pushed him away without explanation. I went silent in an attempt to forget. I knew he liked me, and I was overwhelmed. We didn’t talk for several months, and I avoided him at work, which he had started referring to as the “lemonade stand”. 

“Would you hang out with me sometime?” 

The next February, it was my turn to ask. We met over coffee again, restarting in the new year as friends. We shared the things that had transpired in our lives over the last few months and I apologized for being avoidant. He forgave me, and after that our meetings became frequent again. The weather turned warm and we met for shaved iced across the street from work after my shifts. I no longer felt like he was acting on his desire to be with me, I felt secure in our simple friendship. He encouraged me by his own example to overcome what was in my head that defeated me, and to imagine bigger things. He had been through and overcome so much, he became an inspiration to me.

But one of the worst days of my life transpired in that changing weather of March. The idea that I had ever been lonely or depressed before was single-handedly challenged by this event. It left me broken and confused and truly at the bottom. I felt isolated from everyone and everything I knew.

For some reason, he was there for me. Because of his lack of connection to the situation, I was able to tell him things I couldn’t tell anyone else. I didn’t, and couldn’t tell everything. But I at least had one person I could allow the knowledge that I was not doing very well at all. This went on for a few weeks until something transpired that I still don’t have understanding of. But because of it, we decided to stopped talking and left things alone. I felt lost, I had been relying on someone to get me through some of the hardest days of my life and I didn’t know where to go from there. I lived for several months wishing I had not made what I considered to be a mistake of getting close to someone that eventually would not be around. In hindsight, I understand this period of time was important for me to spend alone, to find strength and faith in God rather than lean on someone to lessen my hurt.

At some point toward the beginning of the summer, he reached out and told me he was moving out of state again. We planned an afternoon to meet and say goodbye. We took a walk in the park, sat on a bench, and caught up for a little while. This is one of the only memories where I can’t remember what we discussed. I was consumed by the fact that to my knowledge, our time was coming to an end and I would most likely never see him again. At the end, we said goodbye and I cried as his car left the parking lot. 

Up until that point, I hadn’t considered how much I had needed a friend like that for a time. Someone who, without reservation or obligation, loved and cared for me through everything I got wrong and made a mess of. People couldn’t understand why we were still friends, why the connection remained. I didn’t know how to explain that it did, because it didn’t have to. Somewhere under all of the layers of complication, we had a genuine connection that survived. 

We didn’t talk that summer, but the following September, he was in town for a day and we met after my shift to sit in the courtyard under falling leaves and weather that was changing once again. In my mind I contrasted this time to the first time we met, and how much our lives had changed. Things were still unsettled for both of us, he was moving back to where his family lived in Indiana to take a new job and it was my last week of work at the restaurant before I embarked on what would be an eight month journey to figure out what I wanted to do next. But we were both moving, going somewhere. No longer killing the time that we once had too much of. I don’t remember what we talked about. I just remember that was the last time ever I saw him, saying a too-quick goodbye and rounding the corner of the law firm downtown. He disappeared out of my life like a vapor. We didn’t speak for 9 months, but during that time I thought of him often and hoped he was doing well in whatever endeavor he was chasing. I used this time as best I could to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Standing on my own two feet and learning to be okay with being alone was fundamental for me in that decision. But I didn't take for granted knowing I had once had someone in my corner cheering me on, and maybe from somewhere far away, they still were.

We have since reconnected through messaging occasional life updates. He is going back to college to work towards CRNA school, and I am in school working towards an associates in ultrasound tech, and in the future, possibly returning for nursing to work and specialize in NICU. 

I have wanted to memorialize this story in some way for a while. Meeting him was like walking outside on a brisk winter day, but encountering the sun shining down anyway with its rays on your skin. He was the persistent warmth on some of my coldest days. I feel lucky to have met him in such a natural and organic way, and to watch a friendship grow from nothing that demanded one.

Kota - I will always remember the day that I met you at the lemonade stand.