I lie down beside Hilly on the raft and she begins to read Dune to me unprompted, picking up where her own silent reading left off.
Lying with my eyes closed, I can hear Olive paddling around in the shallows with the waves lapping against her little floatie tube. She happily chats with Lizzie and Mawney while Claire relaxes in the background and my mom putters around on the porch.
It’s been five days of this. Lake swimming and family time; meals prepared and eaten and cleaned up; watching all of these moving pieces coming together to form an ecosystem we’ve been building since the day we were born.
We get together like this every year. We call it The Rumpus.