both and beauty

I sit out in the sun with my boys
and I love the sun and my boys so much
and wasps start to dive-bomb us.
We run in the house.

They are playing so well together
with coins and coins and more coins,
pushing them across the hardwood floors,
there are coins everywhere,

scattered.

When they’re done
I ask them to pick up the coins
and they listen the very first time.
Then they get distracted and leave half the coins
and I’m standing and saying it again like a record

broken.

I get up the gumption to take them to the park
and not far into the sliding and swinging
I can tell my biggest boy isn’t feeling well.
We go home. I worry.

I get out a snack, some veggies and dip and they eat them
and I let myself think for a moment
Look. I have boys that eat veggies. Go figure.
After they are done with the “trees” that are broccoli
the table is covered in leafy green shrapnel.

The boy who was recently
not tall enough
for the stand-and-pee
can reach now.
He has no aim

and I’m still proud.

We go to urgent care for a strep test
and my big boy cries with the throat culture
and then he calms down so fast and
makes jokes
because
he’s so brave.

We get out all the painting things
and they create
in a way that
breaks and opens my heart
and it’s so messy.

Every day is always both.
The mother is entrenched in the trying
and trying
and the riding it out,

and she can somehow still see that all is beauty
because they give it away so freely.

He’s climbing up to the table

where I’m at the other end,

making the to-do list.

I’m all important and distracted

and then he says I love you, Mommy.

Just because.