I'm An Insomniac Lately. It's

Time Goes Too Quickly. This Is The Advice That My Mother Should Have Given Me From Her Hospital Bed. Instead Of Vague, Unknowable Quips Like "be Careful What You Wish For," She Should Have Told Me Time Slides Away On A Hillside Of Loose Shale And Takes Everything In Its Path - Dreams, Opportunities, Hopes. And Youth. It Takes That Fastest Of All.

It Was True; Always Had Been. Friendships Were Like Marriages In That Way. Routines And Patterns Were Poured Early And Hardened Like Cement.

It Was The Magic Hour, The Moment In Time When Every Leaf And Blade Of Grass Seemed To Separate, When Sunlight, Burnished By The Rain And Softened By The Coming Night, Gave The World An Impossibly Beautiful Glow.

I Have Often Wished In The Past Few Years That My Mom Were Here To Help Me As I Raised My Own Teenage Son. As A Girl, With My Own Mom, I Thought I Knew It All; Now I Know Better. Somewhere, I Know My Mom Is Smiling.

And Before You Barrel Through Some Idiotic Cosmo Girl List Of How-well-do-you-know-your-man Questions, Let Me Say That I Don't Know Squat About Him Except That He Kisses Like A God And Screws Like A Devil.