I am a skinny Vietnamese American girl with a big, big heart and a bigger appetite. When I was younger and being fitted for braces, that all-American ritual of humility and adolescence, my dentist peered into my mouth and asked me, “How do you get so many teeth in that mouth?”

Maybe he saw, in the ridges of my molars and canines poking here and there in an unbridled burst of enameled enthusiasm my insatiable appetite for all things yummy in life -- people, places, things and of course, food.

I love food. It’s my gateway to life. I like to steal my friends away from their busy workdays, their harried lives as new mothers or starving artists, urban athletes or starry-eyed activists, and lay a twinkling spread of deliciousness before them, pass around the wine and watch them transform into kids at a candy store. I clap in delight, they clap in delight, and dinner changes from what is usually a 15-minute meal scarfed down in the midst of a fast-food parking lot to a five-hour feast of friendship.

Food is life. It commemorates our memories with smells that bring our childhood, our happinesses and tragedies, and our families and friends rolling out of the mist of time to sit next to us and share a seat with us at the dinner table of our history. When we lose someone -- whether to death or simply circumstance of growing apart -- it is difficult to taste new things because your mouth is full of ghostly scents and stories, all lingering and disappearing before you can swallow. It is an empty fullness that leaves you hungry and wanting.

So when nha magazine asked me to write an article on healing foods just in time for this issue, I almost leapt at the chance. Almost, but not quite, because I had lost someone I loved very much. I, the big-mouthed girl with the appetite for life, was left at that peculiar moment between love and loss, and like Persephone, did not know how to navigate my way back to the land of the living. My journey back to the gorgeousness of taste, wonder and love, came in the form of a letter from my friend “C.”

“You know that totally trite cliche about making lemonade when life gives you lemons? I was thinking today that you have taken your lemons and made this elaborate lemon banquet for everybody to enjoy, with lemon bundt cake and lemon chicken and those delicious lemon squares with powdered sugar on top, as well as original lemon dishes that you have invented for the occasion. There are probably also lemon sculptures on the table, photos featuring lemons, people dressed as lemons. You taste and admire everybody else’s lemonade contribution. The lemon party is a triumph. Everybody loves it, except you. Why? 1) It all tastes like lemons, and 2) The one you loved is not there.”

Lemons are fruits that have been known for their therapeutic properties for generations. Antibacterial and antiviral, lemons are literally useful for people with heart problems. We are often reminded to make the best of the metaphorical “lemons” life gives us, perhaps to gently nudge us closer to connecting our emotional and spiritual health with our physical health through embracing, even celebrating, lemons in all its forms. The clicheù of making lemonade from lemons is useful advice to protect and strengthen our hearts -- lemons can protect the body from wear and tear, help the immune system and strengthen the makeup of muscles, bones and skin by protecting us from free radicals, preventing heart disease, and lowering cholesterol levels.

The wisdom of lemons was a wake-up call for me. Even with my loss, life continued on. I took the ingredients of living and, as C said, made the most of it -- I worked, I wrote, made new friends, met new challenges and I lived. But in the ache of loss, I had forgotten to taste the stories that unfolded from the act of everyday living. C’s gentle reminder to taste the lemonade I was making and to hold the lemons of change in my body as well as my heart, opened a door back onto the world I loved: the healing quality of food and friends.

In honor of C, in honor of me and in honor of living fully in the midst of heartbreak, loss and change, I invited some of my closest friends together for a meal inspired by lemons. Healing is both a solitary and a shared act. I may have lost one person in my life -- and for a moment, may have felt smaller for it -- but my friends came together this night to create a moment greater than any one person. In the midst of cilantro and garlic, sea salt and ginger, lemon grass and wine, I found a family.

>next