I come from a green land. There is a lot of greenery in the south. Our climate is so dewy and so thick that we learn here how to breathe through our skin. It’s not just a romantic concept, it’s almost neon green kudzu climbing. Vines creep over our lives, over street corners, around hills, down slopes, and into gutters. We are pulsating with fever. During summer storms we sit with the rain. Survive a hurricane with rum. Every few years we stop and listen to the cicadas when they make a request to the audience.
So, of course, when I stepped off a plane in Southern California for the first time at almost 40 years old, I felt like I had landed on the moon. I never imagined that it would be this brown, this red, a place with colors that required a different use of the senses.
Recipe: Lemon Bars with Pecans
I left a demanding life in restaurant sales and took a very smart and very good job as a private chef for a wonderful family in Nashville. And then, in an unexpected turn of events (for me anyway), we found ourselves thousands of miles away in Los Angeles. Los Angeles was my employer and I was in the middle of a major career move. Everything happened so quickly. But I had a job I took on to be more present for my family, and now I was flying around the country for weeks at a time.
I followed the same route every day to the Laurel Canyon house they were renting. During the first few drives, everything overwhelmed me in the most satisfying way: the sky, the birds, the brightness of the sun. Every morning, I park my car, pull to the side of the road, and breathe in the scent of the eucalyptus that aggressively wafts toward me as I stand on the side of the cliff, hoping to smell it in the bushes below. Did. My eyes had never had so much trouble seeing green. Eucalyptus just whispers its color. Everything is very quiet, with millions of subtle shades creating a vast landscape.
It felt like my duty to stay in the rapture. But after a while, she got tired of flying to Los Angeles twice a month and staying for 10 days while writing her memoir and raising her two children in the distance. After seven months and realizing that my valued employer would not be returning to Nashville, I began to accept that this job was not sustainable.
On a particularly bad day when I was about to miss my daughter’s middle school recital, when home felt too far away and I felt too far from anything that connected me, I stopped at a particularly nice observation deck on Mulholland Drive. I noticed this while standing there. there is nothing. There was no one in my desolate field of vision.
I wondered how a person could support a family without losing them completely.
Then, like a revelation from a saint, a yellow glow caught my eye. I looked to my left and saw a modest but luxuriant lemon tree about a yard downhill.
I went to a place I probably shouldn’t have eaten, picked four of the ripest lemons I could find, and took that as my cue to do what I had to do.
Make it somewhere far away. Finally, let’s take you home.
Years ago, I promised myself that I would never give in to the deep fear that if I stopped trying so hard for even a moment, everything would fall apart. But I put these lemons in my lap and thought, well then let’s scatter it all. Lemon bars are made remotely using lemons harvested off the coast of Mulholland. Finally, let’s take you home.
That day, I made lemon bars for my employer’s family. I used Alabama pecans as a gift for the skin and finished with powdered sugar. I took a bite, was satisfied with my slightly woken up tart, and headed home. Other bright colors and my beloved children brought me back to the South.
I’ve been thinking for a while about planting a few lemon trees in large pots in my garden or on my front porch. But it never made sense. Those things don’t grow in Nashville like they do in California. However, there are other things that are effective. It’s what’s appropriate for my location, my porch, and my climate. And those are things that I will continue to strive for.
