Wherever Mama is

We found the perfect pool. Robust, joyful, and empty, like it had been waiting all season just for us. It’s the last real day of summer.

The sprinklers and fountains are setting the tone and my kids are laughing, full-bellied, floatie-armed, waterslide-high kind of laughing. The kind that makes your heart sit up straighter just to listen.

They’ve gone down the slide a hundred times. And still they call for me. “Watch this, Mama!” “Can I get on your back again?” And I do. I let them climb me like a dolphin, let their legs wrap around me, let their loving arms press against my shoulder blades while I drift us through the deep end. Because they still want me. They still reach for me before the splash. They still believe the best part of the pool is being with me inside it. And I know this doesn’t last forever.

One day, they’ll want to swim alone. One day, they’ll ditch the floaties and the squeals and the need. One day, they’ll be too tall for my back and too cool to yell for me from the top of a slide. But not yet. Not today. Today, I am the anchor and the amusement park. The lifeguard and the ride. And I don’t miss it. I don’t scroll past it. I don’t sleep through it.

I am awake inside of the good ol’ days. Fully here. Fully feeling it. Letting time melt like popsicles and smell like chlorinated hair. This is one of the memories they’ll keep and I’ll keep it too. The way the sun looked on their water-slick shoulders. The bright green of the floaties. The sound of “again, again!” The feeling of knowing: this is joy, not later, not someday. Now.

I am living inside of an answered prayer. Yesterday Kaylana asked Oliver where his happy place is and he said, “Wherever Mama is.” And that’s it. That’s the whole thing. That’s the legacy. That’s the miracle. Not a house. Not a headline. Not a perfect body or a curated life, just this:

A summer day, a waterslide, and the sound of floaties squeaking and laughter echoing off concrete. Children who call their mom their happy place and that mom knowing she is living inside of a miracle of her own making.