It's one a.m. -- do you know where your children are? Do you know what choices have led you here, to this time of almost late, but not late enough? Are you asleep? Are you halfway through an essay that should have been done six hours ago? Are you not doing anything, and even that seems too much at one in the morning: the day has just started, what's there to do?

It's one a.m., and I am driving home from work. It is not my home, and it is hardly work, but they are places to drive to and places to drive from. I live in a borrowed house on a ridge in the mountains, with two borrowed cats who don't wonder where I am. I work at the Bard library, the closing shift, and it is a miracle to be spoken to. The drive is a transition from one silence to another, the imposed silence of an empty library, and the resigned, hating silence of cats.

College has changed time for me. One in the morning is not late anymore -- it is when my essays are drafted, my reading started; it is the threshold of the night when I say "Come on. It's one a.m. Stop watching TV and get your life together." In high school, I remember, it was 10 p.m. when things began to crumble, when I began to panic and lament. "I had so much time -- why didn't I do this earlier?" Now, I am working at 10 p.m., and the night hasn't even started. The night doesn't start til early next morning.

It's one a.m., and I am driving home from work, and I am not alone. Headlights pass me regularly, busily, and each time I think "Who is awake right now?" Some remnant of that exhausted teenager trying to finish her math homework before midnight. But who isn't awake now? There are things to do, early in the morning: essays to write, and reading to fake, and Latin homework to stare at and regret, regret, regret. There is work to come home from. There are cats to ignore. There are articles to write, and think to yourself, "Why didn't I do this earlier?"

It's one a.m. Do you know where you are?