Chris Erskine - Lavender in Your Lemonade: A Funny and Touching COVID Diary

Praise for Chris Erskines Books

The worst of times brought out the best of him.

Peter Mehlman, former Seinfeld writer/producer, author of #MeAsWell and Mandela Was Late

Every word, every sentence Chris Erskine writes makes me want to salute him with two fingers of Jameson in shared grief, love, laughter, and life. And now him writing about the plague of our time? Time to toast with the whole bottle.

Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, author of Taco USA

If I have to come and hand sell this book to each of you, Ill do it. This book is so funny and so goodand so short and so elegantly publishedthat you will be thrilled to own it. I tracked the guy down with a fan letter. A+

Caitlin Flanagan, contributing editor of The Atlantic and former staff writer at The New Yorker

Charming, well written, concise, and to the point. Perfect for anyone who enjoys stories of fatherhood.

Library Journal

Erskine touches on the joys and fears that come part and parcel with having small, dependent people living in your house,making the personal universal through the feelings evoked within each column.

BookNAround

More Books
by Chris Erskine

Man of the House

Daditude

Surviving Suburbia

Lavender in Your Lemonade:
A Funny and Touching COVID Diary

Copyright 2020 Chris Erskine
All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in the United States of America.

Cover Designed by Siori Kitajima, SF AppWorks LLC
Illustration by Lars Leetaru

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN-13:
eBook: 978-1-950154-26-5
Paperback: 978-1-950154-25-8

Published by The Sager Group LLC
TheSagerGroup.net

FOREWORD

The Worst of Times Brought Out the Best of Him

As someone who occasionally and painstakingly squeezed out op-ed columns for the Los Angeles Times, I had a no-choice mission to contact Chris Erskine.

His output in the paper was so prolific, I just had to prove that this smiley, mustache-and-glasses guy wasnt acting alone. My guess was he had a secret operation going on, like James Patterson or Andy Warhola whole team of underlings who listen to his every one-liner and column idea and churn out product under the name of their Svengali. After all, without the benefit of a secret factory, it was impossible to believe that one, two-legged human being could write so many absorbing, funny, and wistfully brilliant columns by himself.

Contacting him nearly amounted to investigative reporting: Whats the truth about this guy?

As it turned out, the truth about this guy was truth.

Chris is a newspaperman. For those unfamiliar with that term, he is the kind of reporter who dredges up truth out of sheer powers of observation, curiosity, instinct and yes, habit. He is the kind of throw-back who probably refers to himself as an ink-stained wretch. Hes Bob Woodward with a sense of humor.

Unlike most great reporters, Chris is insanely versatile. At the Times, he wrote about sports, family, restaurants, total strangers he met by chance there was seemingly no observation that went unnoticed, no subject field he couldnt write about.

In a city where it feels as if everyone is a transplant who just came here and meekly tried to fit in, Chris was also an alien to Los Angeles. But he didnt submit to just fitting in. He didnt float above the facts of his adopted LA. He took the time to learn everything about this mind-blowing city and explain it for the rest of us. His Times columns have been eyes and ears for the deaf and blind you know, all the rest of us who live here.

In 2009 (I think) we finally had lunch near the beautiful, now depressingly shuttered, LA Times building. The restaurant was a joint, the kind of busy greasy spoon we both loved. We ate cholesterol burgers, saturated fat fries and joked about how our lunch should come with a free angioplasty.

We talked sports, dished about newspaper people we did (and didnt) have in common. I had the thought that I was probably among 10,000 people whod met Chris and felt like Id known him my whole life. Then again, when someone writes so effortlessly and insightfully about the little quirks of life we all experience, you expect that person to be pretty nailed down to the planet Earth.

Weve had several lunches since, most recently in Santa Monica, during which Chris leaked the information that hed be done at the Times soon. He saw the demise of newspapers way before most and held on as long as he could. He held on long enough to use his columns to describe the worst year of his life. I remember tearing open the paper for those columns and simultaneously wanting to read and to look away. From column to column, you never knew whether youd wind up laughing or crying by the end. No small feat.

The worst of times brought out the best of him.

Now, the worst of times has gone global and The Times doesnt have Chris Erskine to interpret it all for us.

In a word, that sucks.

But then again, its not like he owes us anything.

And its not like hes stopped writing

Peter Mehlman

The Lockdown Begins

I rish as a boiled carrot, I always celebrate Patricks Day in my usual way, hollering Yeatss The Wild Swans at Cole on street corners and small social gatherings of doctors and deadbeats.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.

In my own peculiar way, I am keeping the Irish Literary Revival alive. Im also testing my lungs for all the obvious things.

My theory is that if you can bellow Yeats at full throat, youre probably just fine. The CDC has yet to weigh in on this. But Ive appointed myself the surgeon general of our little cul-de-sac, so its not like Im without medical pedigree.

What a week, right?

Id like to assure you that everything is going to be all right, which it is, though Ive been wrong before. I thought computers were just a phase and that, by now, Bill Murray or George Will would be elected president. Wrong and wrong.

Now I think that, come the warming months, this virus will lose its spirit, and that by autumn therell be a shot for it. Im not sitting idle though, waiting for others to take action. Ive developed my own answer to COVID-19.

A cocktail called the Quarantini.

It started when they canceled Coachella, leaving me bereft and in need of a reason to go on with life. I tend to prefer Stagecoach, but they canceled that too. In two days, they canceled pretty much everything. By Wednesday, theyd called off Christmas.

The last public event I attended was a bookstore bash in Manhattan Beach, a festive evening that propelled me through the weekend. Missing from our lives right now are twinkly eyes and leprechaun smirks. And double-ply, of course.

My kid sister happened to be back in town through all this, a blessing in disguise, for she is a twinkly soul, more Irish than I am. She was here to tend to her daughter, Amy, who was having her ACL renovated after a jumpy ski run went wonky.