Days

While my niece and nephew play on the sea-saw in our backyard, I read on the porch until the sunlight dims and the words of my book become illegible; sentences evaporating into indecipherable little black shapes scattering across white pages. I have terrible eyesight and am always misplacing my glasses.

My niece and nephew are laughing hard on the sea-saw, giggling as they rise up and squealing as they slam back down. From the porch, I call out to them and say that it’s time to go back inside.

Just five more minutes, they promise. Nobody is quite ready to admit that the days are getting shorter, that summer is officially done. I still wear my flip flops, even though the air is getting chilly enough for jackets and sweaters.

But not any longer than that, I say, as they hop off their sea-saw and chase each other through the grass to the tree swing, squeezing every last drop out of the remaining daylight.

The crickets begin their chirping, merging with the dull background drone of traffic and faint clattering from distant train tracks. Next door, my neighbor switches on his porch light to brighten his driveway where his old truck is parked. He steps outside onto his porch, looks out into the alley—empty, except for trash bins lining the wooden fences, some leaves skittering through the gutters, a few stray pieces of litter drifting across the asphalt—and then goes back into his house, letting the screen door fall shut behind him.

The kids are taking turns on the tree swing, swaying back and forth beneath our Globe Willow’s wide branches. Three minutes until curfew and the sun is dropping fast.

Our neighbor’s house is very quiet. He is aging and lives alone. I watch his little dog sleeping under the rosebushes, her fluff of white fur bright against the deep red petals. His wife used to take care of the flowers, but she’s been gone for more than a year now, so he has become the sole gardener.

The last time I saw his wife, she was sitting on her front porch steps staring at her garden with all of its pink roses and yellow marigolds and white tulips. Her head resting against the black iron handrail, her face pale and gaunt, sunken cheeks and drowsy eyes. Her body so frail in her thin green robe. My mother and I sat next to her on the steps and she told us she had been vomiting for three days straight and couldn’t figure out why. I suggested food poisoning, because I always blame food for everything. Maybe, she said, but it seems like something more. We left her, then. Her eyes exhausted, her skin drained of all color.

Three days of sickness turned into two weeks, and she waited over a month before the doctors could finally give her a diagnosis: cancer of the pancreas. An answer, but not a cure. She kept the house dark, the curtains drawn. She slept all the time, too weak to get out of bed. Every day, I looked at her empty porch and thought of her inside her dim room, writhing in her own private suffering. There was nothing anyone could do. Her flowers wilted in the heat of the summer. My mother cried at her funeral.

Five minutes have passed but the kids beg for five minutes more.

Just let us roll down the hill and then we’ll go in, my niece says. Everyone’s time runs out too soon.

Five minutes more.

The kids roll through the untrimmed grass, down the hill over and over. I look at my neighbor’s house and think of his wife. She’s been gone for more than a year, yet my last memory of her seems so new, as though it just took place this morning. It’s strange how memories operate in this way. In my head, memories sit side by side like neighbors on front porch steps. Time is nonexistent, calendars artificial.

It seems like something more.

Everything blends together: years and decades morphing into one single, very long day. Not a good day or a bad day, just a day. Teakettles steaming and screeching in the morning, flowers blooming in the afternoon, kids rolling down grassy hills in the evening.

It seems like something more.

And we are forever bargaining with the sun: Just five more minutes.

Just five more minutes and we’ll be on our way.