Like many parents, I expect that a text to Daughter will be answered immediately. If a minute passes, I assume she is busy, or kidnapped.
If three minutes pass, she’s really busy, hope she’s not getting worn down at work and getting enough sleep, or is on her way to Mexico in the trunk of a car. Which is bad, but she could get some sleep, work being what it is.
If an hour passes, I assume she saw it, but was in a meeting and got busy with something else, like that new project the boss handed her, or she’s trying to untie the rope that binds her wrists with a sharp object in the trunk.
If a day passes, I figure she didn’t see the text, because it scrolled away on her phone, and also, it’s probably dark in the trunk.
“Did you hear back from her?” Wife asks.
“No, but I hope the border guards hear the thumping from the trunk lid.”
Before she got a job, we used to text a lot. I saved them all in pdf form, all the debates and questions and conversations. But since she got a job, the frequency has lessened, and I miss the chats. So I have to send messages like this:
“Mom was in a car crash.”
Then you wait for the bubble that indicates the other person is typing, and you quickly send: “Sorry, typo, Mom was in a car wash” just as her message of WHAT appears.
Trust me, it’s an icebreaker!
While home for Christmas, Daughter said that she’s come to dislike texting, particularly on her phone. I know her generation dislikes talking on the phone, so I wondered what we’d use going forward. Skywriting seems a bit much. Telegrams? “BIRCH THE DOG WANTS TO PLAY STOP HE WON’T LEAVE ME ALONE STOP BIRCH STOP STOP I SAID ANYWAY THINKING OF YOU STOP STOP IT BIRCH”
Then I had a revelation. Rather than pepper her two or three times a week with a text out of nowhere — you know, a barrage of parental interruption that’s practically a hailstorm on a tin roof — what if I gathered up all the things I wanted to say and share and show, and presented them in a single package?
The clouds parted, the trumpets blared. I had invented ... the letter.
My mom wrote letters to me in her teacher-school script. I was surprised when I saw the letters my wife’s mother wrote: the same identical hand. Every boomer probably got a missive in that script, and if we think back, the letters were perfect. Not a crossed-out line.
The only imperfection might be the pile-up of words at the bottom of the last page, the letters getting smaller and smaller, because she wanted to get it all in and have room for Love.
Why didn’t she just start another page? For the same reason she saved rubber bands and plastic honey containers and jelly jars with good lids: the Depression.
I don’t think I’ve written a letter since AOL gave me an email account. An email can contain so many things. You can embed a song: “Heard this today and liked it.” You can embed a movie clip from YouTube from a 1929 silent, because she’s interested in film and history, and will be interested to see how the female archetypes of the flapper movies still seem brash and smart today. You can put in a dog picture.
Greatest Generation parents clipped out newspaper stories, folded them up, sent them to their kids. “You should read this!” Now I send my kid URLs. It’s not the same. You have to click, and then hope it’s not paywalled.
So ... maybe I’d better copy and paste and put that in the letter.
Maybe I could print out that dog picture so she can put it on her desk.
Maybe I could just print out the letter and send that in an ... envelope, that’s the word, right? With a stomp? A stemp? Those sticky squares that say FOREVER. Maybe I could make it all come around full circle, send actual letters, and include a double sawbuck as an inducement to open future missives.
No, stick with the digital letter. They’re easier to save. It’s hard to throw out your parents’ letters, so you don’t, and they go in a box, and the box goes in the basement, and then you die, and they get thrown out anyway. A digital letter can be saved on an archived thumb drive, the digital equivalent of a box on the shelf in the closet.
Bonus: Those YouTubes and songs and little voice-message embeds can be a source of entertainment while she’s kidnapped — providing she can get a good signal.
