the next day

"So apparently fast reading runs in the family," she says, and I look up from the new David Sedaris that I'm a quarter of the way through. I start to ask what else she doesn't know about her mother, but she's already down another aisle, intent on finding something to trade in on birthday gift cards. And then before I can shoplift another chapter she's chosen books with appeal that escapes me and after a few minutes of the regret that a black car with black upholstery always brings in the first real heat of summer, we're home.

Home to where wrapping paper and gift bags and homemade cards litter the living room and the breakfast spread left for the slumber party girls still hasn't been cleared from the table. Perhaps if someone would take out the trash. It has been a perfectly lazy day, aftermath to a perfectly fun party that stretched way past the wee hours. It would probably have made a better impression for me to have been awakened by something other than a doorbell rung by a porch-full of mothers, but for now I'll throw my lot with the house-full of girls who were on the other side of the door, doing whatever they wanted in a perfectly innocent way. Just having fun with their friends, unconcerned with appearance. Perhaps even by the time my car cools off things will have changed. I know these carefree days are numbered. But we're not to zero yet.