As we arrived home from running errands, Annalie asked if she could play in the backyard. Thinking wistfully of my plan to turn on a kids’ TV show and crash on the couch for 20 minutes while she watched, I said, of course you can play in the backyard.

I’m sitting on the deck now, listening to Annalie sing a song about all the plants and animals, and how she’s going to make the world a gree-ee-ee-ner and beh-eh-eh-ter plaaaaace. I’m taking deep breaths, and fighting the urge to go inside and get something done.

Annalie bounds up the deck stairs, carefully carrying something in her cupped hands. She kisses me on the cheek and spills her treasures into my lap. “For you, Mommy! Aren’t they beautiful?” She has brought me two buttercups and two baby wild strawberries. I ask Annalie if she knows the red things are strawberries, and she says, “They are!? We got a whole patch of ‘em down there!” She runs back down the stairs, her voice drifting up to me as she exclaims that she can’t believe we have wild strawberries in our yard.

I think about getting up to empty the scuzzy water from the wading pool, but decide I will wait till Troy is home to help me. Also I don’t want to put my feet in that gross water, and that’s the only way to empty this pool, with its collapsible plastic walls. Instead, I sit on my deck in the middle of tall, green trees. I sip my drink and listen to the birds singing and Annalie playing and I enjoy being still, while it lasts.