It is a sunny spring afternoon and the video captures our three little girls playing outside in the big plastic pool, sliding down the orange slide, squealing with delight and denying they’re cold, despite blue lips and shivers. They seem so small and fragile when I look at them in pictures or home movies, but on this warm, bright afternoon they fill up the inside of my brain with shrieks of joy and delight. I don’t take my eyes off of them, nor do I put down my glass of white wine. In the video, I’m in and out of frame helping our youngest into her life-vest, assisting the older girls with swimsuits and towels, looking away from the camera, always with a drink in my hand. It’s a jelly glass, the kind some people use for juice, with only a splash of white wine left in the bottom. I hold onto it despite the juggling act this requires. Like a one-handed circus act, I fasten Velcro, lift 30-pounds of child, and bend to remove a spider from the pool.

If I close my eyes now, over a year later, I remember other things about that day.

The wine is from a huge box they’ve started selling next to the flower arrangements and balloons at the grocery store down the hill. With it’s easy-pour spout and sweet wine that tastes like soda pop, it’s easy to ignore that it holds about 2 ½ bottles of wine and that I can put away one of those boxes in 2 days or less. I explain it away as a lark; something fun to spice up a family afternoon at home. If it’s after 4pm, I’ve already had two or three glasses and I’m warm and cheerful. I’m more than happy to make dinner, assist little swimmers and make funny asides to the camera-- to accommodate the seemingly endless needs of our small children. How I drink isn’t that different from many of my friends. What is starting to be different is how my day begins to revolve around it. I’m a little planet, and crisp white wine is my sun.