The new Panera flavored lemonade is 150 calories in a twenty-ounce cup. This is listed at the very top of the banner on the app, above such paltry details as price and availability.
I’m two years postpartum, far enough from the birth of my second child to not really be able to call myself postpartum anymore. However, the extra weight from his pregnancy is still present, so I’m constantly mindful of what I eat. Counting grams of protein. Trying not to drink my calories. This lemonade doesn’t have any nutrients to offset that glaring 150 number: no caffeine for energy, no protein for fullness, no fiber for… well, you know. But it’s summer, and I look at the picture in the app for a long moment: the red flecked with green, the crushed ice. I order it—quick, no take-backs.
I’m a Sip Club member, so at least it’s free.
In the drive-thru, my kids wail in protest as I pause their Digger Rex podcast. “Just for a moment,” I say. “Just while Mommy talks to the person at the window.”
“Are we getting a cookie?” my four-year-old shouts.
“NO!” my two-year-old shouts back, just for the perversity of it.
“Not today,” I say, easing the car up to the speaker. “Just a grown-up drink.”
No caffeine in this one—it’s not an iced coffee or a diet soda like my usual order—but I don’t explain this. It’s a grown-up drink, for just me.
The smiling teenager at the window hands me the plastic cup, and the infinitesimal pearls of condensation already forming on the sides cool my hand immediately. Halved strawberries float to the top, crowding the cloudy pink liquid and leaving almost no room for ice. The basil shreds pop against strawberry-red with an almost artificial brightness. Almost too pretty to drink, but I’ve been wrangling kids all morning, and I’m thirsty.
At first, it’s nothing special. Individual flavors are hard to make out. It’s refreshingly cold, though, not too sweet—whether this is from actual moderation in added sugar (sorry, agave nectar) or from the tart balance of the fresh lemon juice, I’m not sure. I can’t taste the basil, though a fractured leaf makes its way up the straw into the back of my throat. I cough, eyes watering, and hastily put the cup down for the rest of my drive.
At home, I place the cup on the dining table while I unload the kids, bring in the diaper bag, and get lunch started. Jumbled by their ride from the car to the house, the berries swirl lazily near the top, doing nothing. As I throw together tuna salad and referee a fight over the Bluey place mat, I kind of wish I were a halved strawberry, floating in ice, not caring. It’s probably very quiet inside a plastic cup. I bet the basil smells good.
By the time my kids are seated, fed, hushed, the drink has had some time to mellow. The ice has begun to melt, the flavors have muddled, and when I take another sip, the warm, earthy notes of basil ride in on top of the sweet fruit tang. It tastes the way dragging my feet through my mom’s garden felt when I was a kid—crushed herbs filling my nose, sticking to the sweat on my upper lip—but in a wave of exhilarating coolness instead of dirt and humidity.
“This is so good,” I say aloud, startled by the harmony of the flavors. They were there all along; I just had to let them sit. My kids clamor for a taste. The four-year-old takes a long draught and declares he doesn’t like it, but the two-year-old grasps the cup in two pudgy hands and bends his head deep. He closes his eyes while he drinks, smacks his lips like he’s seen grown-ups do. “Mmmmmmm,” he shouts, and goes back for more. Then more again. “Mama?” he says at last, holding it out to me.
“That’s okay, baby,” I say, leaning back in my chair, finally starting on my own lunch. “You finish it.”
The cup is probably full of backwash now anyway. But if I find myself needing another sip of garden summer, I know where to find it on the app.