When the delicious iced coffee tastes more watery than it began, it may mean your little girl is a water baby and you took her with you out to the lake shallows to laugh and play.
You may find yourself in the sandbox watching your little boy planting “zinnias” as grains of sand slip through his little fingers, his face all concentration. Gardens can grow by sand right? A mother’s heart sure can, tears brimming, watching your son planting seeds by sand of his own accord.
You may stand at the sink washing your husband’s coffee lid, praying for his safety while he’s out on the road, quietly thinking, “he’s the best man in the world.”
If the kids get to bed almost an hour later than usual, it’s because the garden got half-mowed before the mower gave out and the little boy wants to lounge on the grassy floor and the baby girl (who’s not a baby anymore) wants a turn in the baby swing, and you didn’t say no. You’re glad.
If you can hear music in the blades of grass after the toddler jumps up and away, you’re in the magic of Summer Solstice like you’re in the magic of the “these are the days.” It’s an afternoon in June. It’s the middle of a week. A fairytale of sorts…otherwise known as Wednesday. Known as nothing special and everything you ever wanted.
If you see the white and yellow wildflowers that remind you of daisies beneath your bedroom window and they’d not yet been there before, it’s probably because you’ve tossed the dead ones over the side of your porch after enjoying them on the table, on your windowsill. After walking with your son to get them last summer, or the time you picked the hugest handful that barren evening in June. To mark the summer with something. Something other than childlessness. You went to the flowers anyway. And then you kept on going, kept on tossing them over the side once dead. And God made the wind and made it blow and the seeds found new homes, but you’ve always had yours.
And when you hear your son exclaim, “Mom, I’m flying!” You’ll know he is. Of course, he can. Inches off the ground in a big kid swing, arms splayed. He’s on top of the world he can also build, and you’ll be way down below in the garden, trimming in its wild flowerbed while that “baby girl” is in the Little Tikes swing. And it’s not that life always feels like poetry…
it’s just that is.
Sierra V. Fedorko 
Leave a comment