How are you today? I know you're dead and you may or may not watch over us, but if you do happen to be watching, are you paying attention to how much technology has changed and how quickly the world is moving forward since you died? I mean, in 2004 I had a flip phone. I was very impressed with its ability to take pictures. Now I have an iPhone that I'm looking at photos if people's houses on in an app for a website called Houzz. When I flip the page to the next photo, the gimmicky little green price tags on the items that you presumably find for sale via the app swing to and fro as though you've really taken the whole scene, grasped it and pulled it sideways. They swing and then the swinging calms down and eventually stops after a few seconds. When you trash a picture, it slides diagonal down in crumpled waves in a way that I find quite trippy and entertaining. What is the technology that allows this to happen? When did they find it? Who invented it and where was it first used? I mean, this is crazy! Imagine taking this app back to 2004 and being like look at this thing that I think nothing of opening up and using on the L train on the way home. It would blow people's minds! And yet now it's commonplace.
I know you would be just as curious and excited about all this stuff as I am. I know you would love to have an iPhone, you would get such a kick out of it! We could iChat each other, wouldn't that be fun? Dad is too old to have gotten on board with texting, and anyway, he has huge fingers. I love how you were so into email when Dad was still trying to figure out how to use the CD player (and still doesn't know). Dad inherited your cell phone when you died, did you know that? It was so weird, for the longest time after, I had your name saved in my phone so that it would say "Mom calling." I had to change it because it broke my heart with hope a little bit every time he called, like this time it was really you checking in to make sure I was okay. I had all these voicemails from you saved too; you calling to thank me for a Norah Jones CD, pleased with my Amazon.com note that said "a little bit of sun to brighten up your winter," your voice husky with chemo treatments; you on the way to New York to visit Grandfather, in the hospital again. He would die just less than two months before you. You said it was "white knuckle" driving in the snow but that he was in good spirits. You sounding cheerful and warm, Hello, my Mia, I got your message, just wanted to call…. Every time the voicemails came up to be deleted, I would dutifully save them. For 8 years, your voice was on my phone, and then I got an iPhone in 2011, and plugged it in, and it automatically updated everything, deleting you forever. I called the Verizon guy and actually told him my dead mother's voicemails had been on my phone, but it was no use. I climbed out of bed and went into the kitchen with tears streaming down my face, and my fiancé said, what's wrong? I had kept telling him I wanted to play him those voicemails for him, but it never seemed like the right time.
This summer I was scouring the web again for evidence of her (how hard it is to speak directly too you! I've switched into the you're dead voice already) and I found a video clip of her speaking on public television in 1981. I realized with a start that she was my age in the video, which was such a bizarre recognition, like I'd discovered the existence of math, or the moon. Parents are so…parental; we don't let them be human, or young. I never thought about her being my age until I was this age. A kid sure, but not a person I could envision in a similar place in her life, thinking some of the same thoughts, having some of the same struggles. She, too, was married, and she'd just had me, and she sounded so professional, so sure of herself, so knowledgable about her field. She looked so young and beautiful. I wish I could go back there and say, you were great, I really enjoyed watching you, you sounded so smart. I'm so proud of you. Like I'm her mother. Someday I will be older than her though. The day I turn 58, I"ll lap her.
I know you would be just as curious and excited about all this stuff as I am. I know you would love to have an iPhone, you would get such a kick out of it! We could iChat each other, wouldn't that be fun? Dad is too old to have gotten on board with texting, and anyway, he has huge fingers. I love how you were so into email when Dad was still trying to figure out how to use the CD player (and still doesn't know). Dad inherited your cell phone when you died, did you know that? It was so weird, for the longest time after, I had your name saved in my phone so that it would say "Mom calling." I had to change it because it broke my heart with hope a little bit every time he called, like this time it was really you checking in to make sure I was okay. I had all these voicemails from you saved too; you calling to thank me for a Norah Jones CD, pleased with my Amazon.com note that said "a little bit of sun to brighten up your winter," your voice husky with chemo treatments; you on the way to New York to visit Grandfather, in the hospital again. He would die just less than two months before you. You said it was "white knuckle" driving in the snow but that he was in good spirits. You sounding cheerful and warm, Hello, my Mia, I got your message, just wanted to call…. Every time the voicemails came up to be deleted, I would dutifully save them. For 8 years, your voice was on my phone, and then I got an iPhone in 2011, and plugged it in, and it automatically updated everything, deleting you forever. I called the Verizon guy and actually told him my dead mother's voicemails had been on my phone, but it was no use. I climbed out of bed and went into the kitchen with tears streaming down my face, and my fiancé said, what's wrong? I had kept telling him I wanted to play him those voicemails for him, but it never seemed like the right time.
This summer I was scouring the web again for evidence of her (how hard it is to speak directly too you! I've switched into the you're dead voice already) and I found a video clip of her speaking on public television in 1981. I realized with a start that she was my age in the video, which was such a bizarre recognition, like I'd discovered the existence of math, or the moon. Parents are so…parental; we don't let them be human, or young. I never thought about her being my age until I was this age. A kid sure, but not a person I could envision in a similar place in her life, thinking some of the same thoughts, having some of the same struggles. She, too, was married, and she'd just had me, and she sounded so professional, so sure of herself, so knowledgable about her field. She looked so young and beautiful. I wish I could go back there and say, you were great, I really enjoyed watching you, you sounded so smart. I'm so proud of you. Like I'm her mother. Someday I will be older than her though. The day I turn 58, I"ll lap her.
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