Gonzalo lived with his daughter in a large house whose garden was the envy and admiration of the neighbors. That garden was the work of Gonzalo and his wife for years, but it had not received enough attention for a few weeks because she had passed away after several years of fighting cancer. The only thing he had left to love and care for was the child born from their love.
Angelica was only seven years old when she was left Motherless, but seeing her father, she soon realized that she would have to be strong for both of them. Her father was too sad and lost. She couldn’t be the same if she wanted to make the situation worse. That’s why, even though she missed her mother every day, she had to be strong for both of them. They both needed that a little stability.
But what she didn’t succeed with was motivating her father to continue tending the garden. He simply could not look at the flowers without thinking of his wife and bursting into tears. Gonzalo seemed to improve at times, but then relapsed, and his life began to be full of ups and downs. Angelica missed not only her mother, but also the father Gonzalo had been when she was alive. Now he practically never played and spoke very little.
It was noticeable that he tried to be as attentive as possible to his daughter, but at the same time he had forgotten how to pamper her, how to make her feel really loved. But the worst was yet to come. Gonzalo’s bosses, who had always valued him as a hard worker, did their best not to bother him and allowed him to continue working until he recovered completely from his grieving period and returned to work as before. But a year had passed and Gonzalo was still the same. He had neglected his work all that time, to the point that his bosses had no choice but to find someone else to take his place in the company.
They fired him, but left the doors open for him when he felt fully recovered. But that day was still a long way off. A year after her mother’s death, Angelica saw how the garden had gone from being splendid to being completely dry and lifeless. The house itself looked as if it had been abandoned, despite her efforts to keep it as clean as possible. But little by little she began to feel that she couldn’t handle it all alone and tried to talk some sense into her father again to help her.
But Angelica did not succeed in motivating her father. Even when money became scarce and she needed money for her personal things. For school supplies and for lunch at her school was no longer able to keep asking her father for money for these things, as she knew that what he had left was for food and for the upkeep of their house. Then an idea came to her. Across the street from his house lived an elderly couple with a large garden and fruit trees that usually went to waste.
So one day she went to the elderly couple’s door with a request that they did not expect. Angelica asked them if she could take the lemons from their tree, and in return she would give them a large jug of lemonade every day. The couple, surprised and amused, agreed. They knew that the girl had lost her mother, and they noticed that her father was not having a good time, so they considered that this would be a healthy form of entertainment for the girl. Little did they know that Angelica’s idea was to set up a big table in the street to sell lemonade to passers by during the hottest hours of the day.
However, her plan involved dropping out of school, but since Gonzalo had not attended school meetings for more than a year, she was confident that he would not find out. Besides, since her father practically never left the house, it was enough to put the table a couple of blocks down the street so he wouldn’t see it. So Angelica got to work immediately, as promised. The first picture of lemonade today. She took it to the elderly couple and then left with the table on her shoulder and a large quantity of lemons to what would be her place of work.
For the next few weeks, Angelica was close enough to her house for the neighbors to know who she was, and they were all curious about what the girl was doing. They understood that the father might not be going through a good time financially and that the girl wanted to help in any way she could. So every day they would buy the lemonade she was making, even on days when it wasn’t hot or they didn’t feel like it. Soon the girl had enough money to bring home and put most of it in her father’s wallet without him noticing. She only saved a few pennies to buy the cookies her mom used to buy her and nothing else.
As Gonzalo was so distracted from life, he only realized something was going on when, two weeks later, at the end of the month, he noticed that he still had money left when he had received and spent the same as always, something had to be going on, but he didn’t know what. However, a week later, Angelica could no longer continue selling her lemonade in the same place. As usual, the owner of the house in front of which the girl set her table every day, complained to the authorities about trespassing. When the police arrived on the scene and saw that the complaint was against a girl as young as eight years old. They laughed but decided to do their duty anyway.
So they asked Angelica where she lived and accompanied her home. They wanted to talk to her father. When Gonzalo opened the door and saw his daughter guarded by two policemen in casual clothes when she was supposed to be at school, he feared the worst. At that moment, he woke up from the lethargy he had been in for more than a year and felt fearful that his daughter might be in trouble because of his carelessness. Although the officers soon calmed his fears and explained that they had simply accompanied the girl home because she could no longer sell lemonade in front of the neighbor’s house, Gonzalo knew that he had left Angelica alone, that he had not been the father she needed for a long time.
He thought about how disappointed his wife would have been if she saw his behavior and decided from that day on to overcome his grief and move on with his life because that was what his daughter needed. That night at dinner they talked as they had not talked since before her passing. Gonzalo apologized to his daughter for not being a good father during that time and thanked her for the help she had given him with her lemonade stat. He told her that from now on he would go back to school as usual. She would no longer have to work because he was once again able to work and perform in the company.
He called to tell them that he was finally ready and even though it had been so long, his former bosses welcomed him back with open arms as they had promised. Gonzalo also returned to the garden and a month later it was as lush and colorful as before. He understood that taking care of the flowers his wife had loved so much was a way to keep her memory alive. He taught his daughter all about the garden and so together, they carried on her mother’s legacy and learned to be happy again and to be at peace with God and with life.