It’s a little after 10 am; my eyes automatically creep to my office clock. For years this is when I called my Mom. I still get that nagging sense you get when you are forgetting something. Then it hits me, I sometimes almost reach for the phone before coming up short with a twinge in my heart. When I first left home I would write often and call once a week. Long distance was expensive then. A ten minute call in 1985 cost $14.00 at off-hours rate. I kept the calls to once a week. I only cleared less than $100 a week so I had to be careful. Then Mom got one of those calling plans and she took to calling me. It went on like that for years. Then we got better rates and I took to calling her again. In later years she was living alone and I was worried that there were days when no one might call her or stop in, so I took to calling every day. I usually spoke to her more often than my siblings who lived there. But it wasn’t a chore or anything, I rather liked the routine, I would ask about the weather, tell her about ours and summarize my day and she would do the same. We would talk about the news, what was happening in the world. I would hear the Game Show channel in the background as we spoke. The “Ping” of the answer board meant Family feud, “Come on down, you’re the next contestant!” Meant The Price is Right. I miss those conversations so much; just hearing her voice. There is so much you can tell in a voice, especially one you know well. You can hear tired, or angry, happy or sad. Pride, frustration, joy, fatigue, stress all come through loud and clear in a way that a letter doesn’t convey. Thank God for the phone. I guess I have always felt guilty for moving away; never more so than when she died. The choices we make, or that are made for us hurt sometimes, a lot. So I miss those calls, I would gather my thoughts and check my phone looking at the weather in Halifax and looking at the weather here. My office has no windows and since it had been more than two hours since I had been outdoors it was worth a look. I would look at my day past and filter it. I found this a useful thing. Like some form of meditation, putting the day in focus, my victories and my setbacks. I enjoyed sharing the little moments with Mom, in a way I might not even have done if I had actually been there. If I was there I would not have taken the time to recreate in words the things that moved me that day, the way the light made the new leaves glow, the way the wind scattered fireweed seed or how the trees in my yard smelled. Having to go the extra mile meant I got to relive all the special moments and as I suppose I naturally filtered or edited out the minor bad moments it was a sweet exercise a cleansing ritual. So, if, out of the blue, you get a call from me and I seem a little more rambling than even my usual, forgive me pleas, hers are big shoes to fill it will likely take more than one pair of feet.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 16:51:31 +0000
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