Less than five hundred feet away from my house, my cell phone rings. I pull it out to answer and it's my mother, at 1:02 a.m.
"You're not home yet … it's past your curfew, and you're always home on time. Is everything okay? I was waiting for you to come home; I brought you cheesecake." I'm rolling my eyes, because it's two minutes that I'm late, but I can't help laughing. My crazy mother, who argued with me about how baggy my pants were minutes before I left the house, is ready to make up and sit down with me to hear all about my night. I walk in the house, on the phone with her, halfway through my account of what I did, and we both hang up our phones and sit to talk and eat dessert at one o'clock in the morning.
Three o'clock rolls around and we're still sitting there, tears rolling down our cheeks from laughing so hard. Each time we attempt to go to bed, one of us comes up with another anecdote from last week that somehow made it this far without being recounted. As we finally stumble upstairs, sleepy-eyed but animated nonetheless, we say our good nights, not even remembering that we were fighting just hours ago, and will probably be arguing about something equally trivial in the morning. However, she is always quick to come up behind me with an apology and a chocolate of some sort (because she knows it's my favorite). Ever since I was little, when she'd brush my hair and tell me how pretty I looked in my dress, we've always been close. Now, 17 years later, she is my constant source of inspiration, my therapist, my cook, my tailor, my maid, my chauffer, and my best friend. And when I tell her good night and that I love her, words seem ineffective, but I know she knows how much I mean it.

3 lovers | i love susan.