Grateful Traveler: Lemonade, Anyone?

zesty lemonIf Eskimos are the people who make the road—and life for that matter—gentler, kinder and a hell of a lot more fun, one has to ask, where do they come from?

Are certain people born with a magical gene that has them meeting adversity (theirs as well as yours) with a smile, a helping hand and a positive attitude?

Or can it be taught, nurtured by those who believe that one of the life recipes everyone should know is how to make lemonade from lemons?

I pondered this question as I listened to 7-year-old Sophia Barber describe the first day of her family’s recent camping trip to Yosemite. While this family of four: Sophia, 4-year-old sister Chloe, father Royal and mother Jennifer, were not ever in peril, the way they dealt with their own little series of catastrophes gave me pause – and hope.

Sophia, with a little help from Jennifer, tells the story like this:

“It was really hot.”

floating in innertube“One hundred degrees on the valley floor,” explains Jennifer. “So boiling hot we rented an inflatable boat and inner tubes so we could float down the Merced River.”

“The water was FREEZING!” exclaims Sophia. “Then, it began to rain—really, really hard. Thunder and lightning and everything. We got completely soaked and really, REALLY cold.”

“There was no rain in the forecast,” says Jennifer. “But suddenly, the sky opened up and in minutes the temperature dropped from 100 to 69 degrees.”

So the Barbers did what any sane family would do. They got out of the river.

But it was still lashing rain and now they had another problem. The girls were shivering with cold but the car was back at the put-in point. Commercial vendors had designed the river ride so you put in, float for two hours to a take-out point, then they drive you back to your car.

“Not an option,” says Jennifer. “The girls would have had hypothermia if we’d stayed on the river.” So they picked up the boat and the inner tubes and hauled them to the road.

Sophia cold wet happyThere Jennifer and the girls hopped on a shuttle back to their car and left Royal with the gear. “Because of the heavy traffic it took us an hour to get back to him.” One wet, drippy, cold, clammy hour.

“Then we loaded everything in the car, dropped it off with the vendor and went back to our campsite for dry clothes,” says Jennifer. At least that was the plan. But when they got back to their tent they discovered everything they owned was sitting in six inches of water. There were no dry clothes.

So they put everything in the car. Then they tried to pick up the tent and turn it over so the water could rush out. But the tent was too large for the four of them to maneuver.

Enter their neighboring campers. With their help, they were able to empty the tent and set it up again. But now they had to wash and dry two weeks worth of clothes. So off to the Laundromat they went, where they filled up every machine and spent the next four hours doing laundry with a quick dash out for some food.

Now at this point I don’t think anyone would have blamed Royal or Jennifer if they had started to complain, gotten angry or even allowed a small expletive to slip out. But no. What Sophia remembers is this: “It was so much fun. We had such a great time. We really laughed a lot.”

She was so enthusiastic I turned to Jennifer to ask, “Was it really fun?”

She rolled her eyes and gave me a look that said “Yeah, right.” But here’s the important part. Even though Jennifer and Royal were having anything but a good time, they never let their girls know. They joked and giggled and played games through it all, acting as if having everything go wrong is better than when things go right.

Which is when I knew how Eskimos are made. You don’t have to be born that way.

You just have to be nurtured along with love and caring, surrounded by adults who don’t freak out at adversity, but take the time to teach you that magical recipe. So one day when you are grown and come across someone who is out of luck and out of hope, you are able to offer a smile, extend a hand and say, “Lemonade, anyone?”

By Jamie Simons for PeterGreenberg.com.

Read the story that started it all: An Eskimo Showed Me the Way. Check out some highlights from the rest of the Grateful Traveler series: