Who Am I, Now?

It was around one o’clock in the morning when I woke up and discovered that Mandi had not yet come home.  The light on the vent hood over the stove was still on, serving as a nightlight to help her see when she came in.  Just to make sure she had not left it on by mistake, I opened the door to her room to see if she was in her bed.  As I expected, it was empty. Disappointed not to find her there, I went back and laid down, telling myself that she was probably camped out on a couch at a friend's home.

In a way, I should have been relieved, since most of her friends lived on the out skirts of town and I always worried about her breaking down on the way home. That’s why we had allowed her to buy the smaller car when she blew the engine on her Ford Bronco a few months earlier. I worried about the size, but in the long run had decided that it would be safer and more dependable.

The car was only three years old and had low mileage and it had been equipped with air bags and automatic seat belts.

I would have preferred for her to spend more time at home and for her friends to come to the apartment to visit, but since we lived in such a tiny place, it was understandable that she would want to go to their homes to visit. 

I told myself she had made the right choice by staying somewhere for the night, I just wish she would have called.  I understood that she didn’t like to call when it was this late, since Scott would be getting up at 4:30 a.m., and I didn’t push the issue since she was old enough to live on her own. Still, I made a mental note to speak to her about this in order to save any future worries.

This night though, I found myself unable to shake the uncomfortable feeling that was gnawing at me as I laid in my bed and tried to fall back to sleep. If it had been a weekend, maybe I would have accepted her absence a little bit easier, but because it was a weeknight and she had not indicated she would be out late, I couldn’t help but worry, no matter what excuse I told myself.

I dozed off and on for the next couple of hours, only to wake up every few minutes to see the light was still on in the kitchen.  Sometime around 4 a.m. I got out of the bed and checked her room one more time, and finally decided that she was not coming home, not this late.

I went to the kitchen and turned off the light knowing it was no longer needed.  As I pushed the button that would turn it off, I felt a twinge of sadness, I just didn’t know why or what it meant. I went back to my bed and lay there until the alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. and as Scott got out of bed, I informed him of the fact that Mandi had not come home.  He reassured me that she was okay and had just spent the night with one of her friends.