The new trampoline arrived early. Not just any trampoline a pink one, because apparently we’ve fully committed to the pink aesthetic in this house. Pink bedroom. Pink playhouse. At this rate I’m waiting for Kris to roll up in a pink truck and announce he’s finally embracing his destiny.

The old trampoline had earned its retirement. That thing survived all the  kids, half the neighborhood, multiple sleepovers, and enough questionable flips to qualify as an Olympic event. It owed us nothing. But its time had come, and the new one landed in boxes in the garage a few days before we actually had time to deal with it…which of course made it irresistible.

I was working when the kids wandered in like a tiny union delegation. “Mommy, do you think we can put the trampoline together?”

Now. You need context here. These are the same children who make me run laps all day. Kayson recently discovered door handles and has been using that power with zero remorse. Lynnlee will sit there hungry for an hour rather than make herself a Nutella sandwich, like spreading hazelnut paste on bread requires an engineering license. And Harper can apparently recover from near-death faster than Wolverine, except both her legs mysteriously stop working the second I ask her to pick up toys.

These are the people who generate seventeen mystery cups around the house and swear under oath that none of them are theirs. And now they wanted to disassemble one trampoline and rebuild another, unsupervised, like a tiny chaotic engineering firm had just opened in my backyard.

I wasn’t convinced. Honestly, I wasn’t fully convinced about Kris either.

In our marriage we have very clear roles. Kris lifts things. I interpret instructions, instructions that always read like they were translated from Chinese to German to English by a squirrel with a grudge and a Google Translate app. Somehow I become the family archaeologist, squinting at a diagram that looks like a ransom note. “Ah yes. Step 14 clearly means this bolt goes here, despite the picture resembling a potato.”

Kris provides the muscle. And every single time I think, he’s got this, I don’t need to hover, two hours later I walk outside and there’s something in the yard that resembles modern art and possibly a cry for help.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you follow the instructions?”

“Mostly.”

Mostly. The word that means we’re spending the rest of the evening undoing three hours of progress because Step 28 happened before Step 3, and now there’s a bolt with nowhere to go and a faint sense of betrayal hanging over the yard.

So when the kids volunteered for trampoline duty, I grabbed my coffee, sat down, and thought: well, this should be a show. Maybe they inherited some secret engineering gene nobody told me about. Or maybe I’m about to walk outside and find Kayson swinging springs around like nunchucks, Lynnlee standing there waiting for someone else to read step one, and Harper already flat in the grass, legs “broken,” narrating her own tragedy to no one in particular.

Either way, I’m not moving from this chair.

Because motherhood is just unpaid middle management for a team of wildly overconfident, mildly feral coworkers who are somehow still the best part of my day. And if the whole thing collapses?

That’s what warranties are for.

And wine please send wine.