For years, “the trouble with the daughter” has been a family catch phrase. I don’t recall where it originated, maybe in a movie or a book. But every now and then, it pops into a conversation, more a squawk than a sentence – “The trouwble with the dauwghter” – which makes us all laugh since our daughter, Anne, is not a troublemaker.
Well, last night the phrase popped into my head at 2:30 AM when a thunderstorm startled me out of a sound sleep. “Where’s Anne,” I immediately asked Hiram.
“Huh?” He replied.
To back up a little, she called at 9:00 Sunday night to say she was on her way back from a visit with her sweetie and should arrive home around midnight. But we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her. So I jumped out of bed, internally squawking, “The trouwble with the dauwghter,” and ran to see if her car was outside.
Unfortunately, it was too dark to see anything from the kitchen door, since the garage light that burned out six months ago still hasn’t been replaced. I would have traipsed down the walk for a closer look, but it was raining and lightning, and I’m pretty much a weenie about electrocution, so I didn’t.
Instead, I ran up the stairs and looked in Anne’s room. Now, I thought I was pretty quiet, so it must have been the hall light I turned on that woke the daughter. She sat up in bed and said, “Huh?” Sometimes she reminds me so much of her dad.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I apologized, “but why didn’t you come to our room and tell us when you got home?”
“I was going to,” she yawned. “But you came out and talked to me.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, and you asked me a bunch of questions.” She lay back down and turned over.
I went back to bed and spent the rest of the night desperately trying to remember our conversation. So far, I haven’t been successful. Either Anne pulled a middle-of-the-night fast one, which is out of character for her, or I’m living in the twilight zone, which has lately become my favorite destination location.
The way things are going, a new catch phrase will soon pop up at our house. I can already hear them squawking and sniggering, “The trouble with the mother.” But their snide, little comments won’t bother me. I’ll just toddle off to bed and sleep off the conversation.
What you can’t remember can’t hurt you, I always say.
