Winning

Charleigh, Cade, & Clementine: Today

I wish for you a day like mine: where your man and your boy wake up early and slide out so quietly you hear next to nothing, where your girls sleep on and on.  You curl in your dimly lit room with your younger girl, nursing and dozing inside log walls under a ceiling fan and a thin, fleece blanket. 

After at last the three of you rise, you swim with friends.  They're so young, your girls: twenty-seven months and nine months, so sweet in their itsy-bitsy-teenie-weenie bikinis and flotation devices, with their pink sun hats and sparkling eyes, splashing hands, and wide, white-toothed smiles.  Your older girl eats pizza and cupcakes and freezer pops, and your younger girl nurses poolside, and you feel happier in June heat than you've ever felt, before.

Photo by Rachel Huff

Photo by Rachel Huff

Photo by Rachel Huff

Photo by Rachel Huff

Photo by Rachel Huff

Photo by Rachel Huff

The three of you make it to the bus stop just in time for your boy, and he is pleasant and agreeable, even when you pull out your camera.  You manage to get one decent shot, and your older two watch iCarly while the youngest jumps in the Johnny Jump Up and you make a big ol' spinach salad and grill up some lemon-pepper chicken to eat on top of it.  Later, you wash it all down with milk: over ice, the way your daddy drinks it, and your shoulders burn from too much sun, but the milk slides down cold.

Your man comes home from work, and you greet him on the porch.  You know for the way he looks at you that you will have as many babies as you like.

You head to choir practice with your boy, where the two of you (not counting Mrs. Carol, the organist) make up 50%.  Your boy sings soprano with perfect pitch, and his voice fills your ear as a bell.  Later, the two of you play a game of backgammon, and he beats you, and you remember Bob and smile.

And, really, you guess you've been smiling all day, and--if your heart were any fuller--it would explode.  And you want nothing more, and you wish for nothing else, and you wouldn't buy a lottery ticket even if you knew you would win, because you've already won it all.  You have everything you've ever wanted, and then some, and you wouldn't change a thing.