Quinn's spiky hair bursts out of the water directly in front of me followed by his pixie face. Air blows from his mouth like the release of a surfacing seal. Water splatters my open novel and rolled jeans. He giggles and I try not to let actual annoyance enter my voice.

“Quinn, my book!”

“Momma?” His small fingers curl around the lip of the hotel pool, wrinkled and pale. “How come you don't like to do anything fun?”

The question knocks the breath out of my lungs like an unwelcome plunge into a cold pool—something I truly don't enjoy. I take in the steamy subterranean room. Our four children play enthusiastically with their Dad, climbing him to be flung backward into the water. Another mom in a pretty red swimsuit tosses a ball with her life-jacketed three-year-old. Two little girls take turns tug boating across the pool with their older sister.

I am fully dressed, seated on a towel to keep my blue jeaned butt dry. My wool sweater is still on, my book in my lap. I didn't even bring my suit on the weekend trip even though I knew we'd be at a hotel for three days. I hate to be wet. I am always cold. I hate to be splashed. I hate to be climbed by slippery child-creatures who suddenly seem to have suction cups on their toes and fingers.

I'm not that mom. I'm never the one in the fort, playing the game, giving the rides. I like a supervisory role—making snacks or counting heads. I never want to be on the sled, running the race, building the snowman. I would call myself lazy, but I think that's unfair. I guess I'm a very sedate person. I want to argue with him—I do fun things! I love museums. I love to read. I love long walks.

We used to have lovely long afternoons together, all four kids and I, walking in the huge city park in our neighborhood, hunting tree fairies, but now they all want to ride their bikes. I'm an unsteady, timid biker and so I become the nagging tag along, carrying lunch blocks behind them. “Stop at the street. Wait for me to cross. Don't fly down that hill without looking!”

Somehow, I don't think my internal protest will convince my six-year-old son.

“You just don't like to exercise, huh mom?” I ride horses really well, my brain argues, but it makes me blush. I haven't ridden seriously in years. He's never seen me ride.

I think of a close friend, buried in kids in the pool on our annual vacation together or covered in mud at the water hole on our sad patch of rural land. I hate mud. And in the summer when it's warm enough to contemplate getting wet and muddy, horrible, huge, mud daubers hover everywhere, making the scene even less appealing.

Will they think of me like this always? In a sweater and jeans by the pool. Or will they remember that I had the snacks ready when they got out, cold and hungry. That I read books every night, exclaiming over my favorite scenes.

“My fun things are different from yours, right now.” It sounds half-hearted even to me.

“Oh!” he says and with a flip and another splash that spreads like a kiss across the open page of my book, he is gone.

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