Sierra V. Fedorko

on either side of me
with lemonade in hand
“clink”
he says contentedly
and their Minute Maid juice boxes
tap together happily in
cheers, cheers, cheers.

and oh how I agree—

cheers to you and
cheers to you,
my daughter and my son.
cheers to dreams I couldn’t imagine
ever coming true
some seven years ago
while your dad and I began a garden and
leaned into life anyway
on another sad
Mother’s Day.

so, yes, yes, yes—

cheers to your baby sister in her striped socks
and polka-dots,
cheers to the mama bird I see making a nest
in our porch rafters,
cheers to the wooden pirate ship
your dad built in the wild-grown garden,
handing him an old bedroom curtain
he makes it into sails,
they’re billowing in the breeze just now,
and I can’t stop smiling.

cheers to meandering Saturdays and fresh-baked warm
banana bread overwhelmed
by chocolate chips,
cheers to cartoons on the couch after a bowl of cereal,
cheers to wildflowers with their audacity
to keep on coming back, and
cheers to all of us, like them,
in our next and beautiful bloom,
a year older than we had been
last spring.

cheers to finding out so young
that you and you and you
and your dad
and this big, little life of ours
is the richest I could ever get,
that all the achievements and accolades
could never come close to this,
to lying in the garden grass
my children next to me
raising their lemonade,
“clink, clink”
enjoying it to the very last
drop.

so—

cheers to this and
cheers to that,
I’m having the time of my life
just cutting into sugary banana bread,
and poking a straw through a cardboard
juice box

for you and you and you.

I hear the birdsong like applause,
our laughter, the encore.

-S.V.F., Minute Maid, Minute Made

read more:

There Are Things I Wasn’t Prepared for When I Became a Mother

The Sermon – let the little children come

Spring Beauty – embracing God’s gifts no matter how I feel

❤