Hard telling not knowing

"Why didn't you tell me my brother has a girlfriend?"

That's a loose translation of the message I had to decipher by squinting at a string of so-called words - not a vowel in the lot - comprising a single sentence with too many exclamation marks.

"B Cool, YDU?"

"Mom! Are you having a stroke?"

It was my college-age daughter, texting at 2:44 a.m. on a Wednesday demanding to know why I had failed in my unsworn oath to be her personal and immediate connection to news of home.

"I didn't want to gossip," I replied, trying to prop up all my good intentions on a leaning tower of unquenchable curiosity.

But now that the cat has clawed its way out of the bag. "Who told you?"

The boy, himself, of course.

It had been 27 hours and 45 minutes since I knew of this status change.

 

The truth was he hadn't told me. I just noticed he was talking on the phone more and walking around the house with the unmistakable look of an emotion that resembled happiness. And put two and two together.

Now I was speaking her language:

"Omg, do u NO who?"

And she was tossing words in my face:

"Will you stop that? Talk like a human being again, jeesh. I thought you didn't want to gossip?"

"It's not gossip if it contains facts."

.... *blinks nervously *

Apparently, she wasn't buying it. 

"Gossip," she lectured, "requires only the dissemination of personal information --veracity and vitriol notwithstanding -- to which the true owner has neither determined nor been afforded participatory authorship."

The assessment was fair.

"I was so scared of being "That Mom" that I couldn't bring myself to ask any prying questions. Not that I didn't try. But watching the expression on his face turn from horror to stone made me rethink my entire path to parenthood.

And no amount of chiseling would ever produce a work of art. I would have to be careful not to reduce the whole thing to rubble.

"All I know is that she's in one of his classes and she lives within walking distance."

I can't see her, but I know she's posed in the style of an early 90s lady detective; rubbing her hands together and getting ready to crack her knuckles. I know she won't go through with it because as much as she likes the satisfying snap she hates the feeling.

"I'll see what I can get out of him," she says with no small amount of exhilaration. Her mission, which she created and chose to accept, would be to extract uncomfortable secrets from her younger, adoring, and more trusting sibling.

After all, she has given him invaluable tips on hairstyles, clothing choices, and skin care that haven't led to public embarrassment yet.

"I'm his big sister. He knows I'll always have his back. Oh, almost forgot! He sent me her picture. She's very pretty. I'd send it to you but I know you're trying to be cool.