Satisfaction, Like It or Not

I wore the boys out Saturday. Wore them out. It was one of those afternoons that scrapbooks itself involuntarily: the rosy-cheeked children splashing and giggling in sepialike snapshots. I bought them another baby pool, and I kid you not, I have never been so happy with a six dollar sale item. I sat in my lawn chair reading, reading! while they bounced around safely in two feet of water. Greg grilled burgers and hot dogs and we put his Sigma Chi mugs in the freezer for frosty root beers.

When it got too hot I actually crawled in the pool myself. It was really grassy, you know, after Toby and Charlie had climbed in and out all afternoon. I grabbed the strainer from the sandbox and lazily skimmed the water. It felt good to cool off, but also kind of lame sitting there in an inflatable pool spooning out debris.

“What are you doing?” Toby said.

“I’m just cleaning off the yucky grass.”

“Why is the grass yucky? It isn’t yucky on the ground.”

He didn’t have to be so rational about it. I don’t know why it’s so yucky. It’s so yucky because I would rather be floating on a raft in a big people pool with a nice vacuum thingy cleaning it for me.

I like to think I’m above the discontent raging through America like typhoid, but I’m not. I peer out of Eden, looking for that one thing that isn’t mine, completely missing the giant mountain of wonderful I’m already standing on.

My two little boys are fresh and sweaty with life, laughing wildly under the bright blue skies of summer. How on earth could this be any better?