long days

The best thing about my mother's apartment is the setting, butt-up against a small stretch of woods. The deer come to the edge with their gestures of the feminine. The crickets are so many they seem to roar. In my jetlag I'm awake before dawn. I sit at the back window and have this all to myself, this enormous throbbing that has no end-point or goal.
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A lot of experiences find no real end.
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As a small child my best friend was the daughter of my mother's friend Louise. We spent days together, slept in cribs and cots together, tumbled around in the backseats in the days before car seats. When her family moved to Pennsylvania I was sure she would remain my dearest friend. But I saw her only once or twice again, and she'd begun a separate life, playing sports I didn't play, making friends with strangers, and my feelings of affection for her became an onus and embarrassment I still can feel.
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We are much more comfortable with the 'clean break,' not the ragged thread that seems to disappear only to stitch back up into the fabric somewhere far off.
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My mother mentions the time your sister went to live with your father. When was this, I say, because she is making it up, or exaggerating. When she was about 15. I don't remember that, I say. That must have lasted all of three days. It was a long three days, my mother says.