The Pose of the Summer

This is it.

This past weekend, I was in a catcher’s squat next to a baby pool filling up reusable water balloons. I lost count of how many times I shouted, “Leave the hose alone!” at my kids. If you want to know what it’s like to be a mom in the summer, try holding a malasana pose under direct sunlight on a 99-degree day—while getting soaked—even though you’ve said, repeatedly, that you didn’t want to be.

I let my boys stand in the shady part of the yard. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is. It’s for them I get sun spots. (I already scheduled a laser appointment with my derm for the fall.)

There is no deodorant on earth that can withstand parenting young children during a heat wave. You have to accept smelling like meat and move on. I still swipe on my natural stuff each morning, but at this point it’s just muscle memory—like Chapstick for your underarms. There’s no functional purpose to it.

I’m laughing now at the visions I had of myself this summer: windswept hair on a beach, glowing skin, sipping chilled white wine on a patio. In reality? I should’ve pictured myself in a permanent sweat-and-cropuch position.

This is motherhood in late June: soaked, squatting, shouting into the sun.

Here I am, in the pose of the summer.

Happy heat wave. Go wild and get yourself a Klondike bar.

Drop a heart or share my work if you laughed. You’ll be my favorite forever.