I set Phoebe on a blanket in the grass on a warm, sunny afternoon, thankful for the nice weather and the chance to be outside. Walter loves to play outside, and parenting is somehow easier out here in the fresh air (and when I can’t see the dishes, the clutter, and the cat hair collecting on the unvacuumed laminate.) Phoebe squints against the brightness of the day even though she’s in the shade of the maple tree. She scrunches up her nose as a light breeze tickles her face. She tries to eat a handful of grass.

I pull the grass out of Phoebe’s mouth while Walter runs around the yard, finding the best sticks and pouring water on the unruly plants growing along the side of the house. Just a few summers ago, he was the baby sitting on the blanket with me, or, more likely, crawling away across the yard to go exploring. Now he’s a little boy who can put on his blue and orange sandals (and even fasten the Velcro strap) all by himself.

He calls out to me from the patio, “Can I do my bubble machine?”

I tell him, “Sure,” but that I’m going to pour the bubble solution this time.

The bubble machine was a $10 impulse buy last summer when I was pregnant and looking for an easy way to entertain my toddler. It did not disappoint. It actually exceeded my expectations. (Though, to be fair, my expectations were something like, “This might be cool,” and, “It will be easier than blowing the bubbles myself.”) The bubble machine is small but mighty. The first time Walter and I turned it on, we quickly found ourselves surrounded by more bubbles than I’d ever seen in one place before.

I get up from where I’m sitting to fill the bubble machine with bubble solution and set it where my toddler can reach it. He turns it on, and soon there are bubbles all around us. They fill the air between the patio and the spot where Phoebe sits on her blanket. Walter stands still for a rare moment and watches the bubbles as they come out of the machine and float towards the neighbor’s house. Phoebe watches them, too. She smiles at them and reaches for them as they drift past.

There’s something carefree about the way a cloud of bubbles follows the breeze. They float lazily on. They’re bubbles; they have nowhere to be. It’s unexpectedly relaxing to watch them. I never realized how much I liked bubbles, but I feel a simple, silly happiness as I watch them.

Walter wants to catch one, and I remind him you can’t catch bubbles because they pop when you touch them. He asks what color bubbles are. (That’s one of his favorite questions lately: “What color is it?”) I tell him bubbles reflect the things around them, so they are all different colors depending on what colors are nearby. Our bubbles are mostly green and blue.

Next he wants to chase them and “clap” them, and he wants me to do it too. So I do. We take turns popping bubbles by clapping them between our hands. Walter chases them, and tells me, “Get that one, Mommy!” We watch them float around the yard. We watch them pop on Phoebe’s forehead. Walter gets out the garden hose and sprays the bubble cloud for a while before he goes back to watering the weeds. He slowly loses interest in playing with bubbles, and Phoebe tries to eat grass again.

I take the grass away again and sit back down in my chair on the lawn. It’s a perfect summer day, with warmth and sun and shade, the constant threat of being sprayed with the hose, necessary vigilance to keep plants out of the baby’s mouth, and, of course, bubbles. I’m never going to be the mom with the most energy or the mom who creates imaginative games with her children. I’m not always patient. It will probably be a few years before I feel ambitious enough to take my kids on a family vacation. I’m not the mom with the cleanest house or the fanciest home-cooked meals.

But I am their mom. I’m the mom who keeps it simple, who takes them outside to play in the yard on a summer day. I’m the mom who always says yes to the bubble machine. And when the sun is shining and the air is full of bubbles to watch or clap or spray with the hose, what more do you really need?