Annabella Queen: Weepy Night in Pennsylvania

Have you ever had your child say something to you that sent a chill down your spine? For the last couple years, my six-year-old daughter Lila, has said, "The water always wins" whenever she takes a bath. It creeps me out. To her, it's a just a bathtime game. She sits in the empty tub and inches back as I turn on the faucets. She tries to see how long it takes for the water to touch her skin. Obviously, "the water always wins." It makes me think of something a drowning victim would say from beyond the grave. (And that's why I can never watch horror movies. My imagination runs wild just fine on its own.)

As Hurricane Sandy swept through the East Coast Monday and the local weatherpeople predicted rain, wind, power outages and floods, that phrase kept running through my mind. The water always wins, the water always wins. School was cancelled. My office was closed. My husband is a reporter, so he went in to work that night. It was just me and the kids waiting out the storm with snacks and movies and crafts. Eating my weight in pistachios calmed me a little bit.

I worried about the giant willow tree, the centerpiece of our backyard, and the maple out front. They looked sturdy and we'd recently had them professionally trimmed. But, I wasn't taking any chances. Since our bedrooms are upstairs, we camped out downstairs in the living room.

Lila's in there somewhere.

The rain was steady, but I knew that only from walking out on the porch periodically. I couldn't hear it falling on the roof like it does during a summer thunderstorm. The wind didn't whistle. I shot video of the willow branches swaying the rain. Everything looked, surprisingly, OK.

We fell asleep in the living room.

My husband returned home around midnight. I'd been sleeping on the couch and woke to ask him how his night was. We talked for a few minutes. He then walked upstairs to get a pillow. I heard him say, "Oh no! OH NO!" I ran up, thinking the bedrooms were flooded or a piece of the roof was missing. He was looking through the blinds of the window that faces the backyard. The willow was gone. We talked about how lucky we were, how it had just politely fallen without a sound, missing our house, our neighbors' houses and the power lines.

"Geez," he said, "I guess we can sleep upstairs now." He scooped up Lila. She woke and he told her what had happened.

Still half asleep, she said, "Oh, I loved that tree."

I sat in the dark living room with the TV off and felt so sad. And then immediately felt silly. Unlike so many others in this storm, we were alive. Everything could have been so much worse. The water DIDN'T win. But, I set the timer on my phone for 15 minutes and let myself cry anyway. The irony of crying over a weeping willow was not lost on me.

'Oh, I loved that tree.'

As I left for work this morning, I put the checkbook on the counter. My husband was waiting for the tree guy to show up to give an estimate for removal.

"We can afford [X]," I said. "If it's more than that...we'll figure out something."

An hour later, my husband texted me at work. The estimate was exactly X. The tree guy suggested planting an October maple in the spring.