Pick Up the Phone, It's Your Mother

I want a new holiday.  There should be a National Call Your Kids Day.  On this day, parents are encouraged to phone their kids at any time and kids are required to answer.

I do not know what has gone wrong with my parental wisdom or with the strict upbringing under which my children were raised, but somewhere along the line my son and my daughter eschewed the telephone.   When I was growing up, the telephone was the hot spot in the home.  I waited anxiously for it to ring, always hoping it would be for me.  There was a sort of status attached to being the one for whom the bell tolled.  It signified an importance beyond the family unit.  Someone, somewhere was thinking of you, or needed you.  It was an excuse to break from homework or household chores and conduct a conversation that could not be fully monitored.  We had a strict ten-minute limit imposed on telephone chatter.  Those were the days before caller-ID, when trying to reach a business associate who had teenage kids would, under normal circumstances, mean hours and hours of that obnoxious “busy signal.”

Today, however, there is a 1:1 ratio between kids and phones.  A kid stows all her gear in a backpack so her hands are free to clutch her phone.  But it is no longer a “telephone” in the strict sense—a word that means, quite literally, distant sound.  The only sound that kids accept from their phones these days is the music stored on the device.  Text is the new kidspeak.  There has even been a resurgence in fingerless gloves so kids can traverse college campuses while keeping in constant contact with their buddies. 

When I try to call one of my kids, it is not unusual to get a text from them—while their phone is ringing—telling me, "text, don't call."  This does not help me while I am speeding down the Interstate at 55 mph.  My daughter insists that her reason is simple: she does not have the time to talk.  I find this a bit hard to swallow.  The last “text conversation” I had with her took over an hour.  I have to stop everything I am doing in order to carry on one of these crazy conversations.  There I sat on the sofa, punching out a few badly typed words (darn that auto-correct!) and then waiting and waiting for a response.  I just couldn’t figure out why anyone would find that preferable to a live, brief conversation.

My son clued me in.  There has been an evolutionary leap between my generation and the next.  It is called “multi-tasking.”  While I am sitting on the sofa trying to have a broken conversation with my daughter, she is actually writing a paper, listening to her playlist, checking Facebook and having half-a-dozen other text conversations at the same time.  For people of my advanced age, we did not come equipped from the factory with this capability.  Some of us have been able to adapt and others of us—well, we just wish our children would answer when we call.

I remember when I was a kid learning about Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.  I asked, “When is kid’s day?”  Of course, my mother hit me with the pat answer, “Every day is kid’s day.”  When it’s Mother’s Day, my kids do me the honor of sending a lovely card and even calling me, but it is staged and on their terms.  I want a special occasion where I dial their number and they are required to stop everything else and talk with me.  I miss the spontaneity and joy in their voices.  I am not looking to interfere or to judge; I am simply asserting a mother’s right to call her kids.  It is not about whether they need anything from me; rather, it has everything to do with indulging whatever vestige of motherhood I have left.  When kids live at a great distance, a fully synchronous, one-on-one conversation is the closest thing we get to a hug.  It should go without saying that we dinosaurs of a bygone era need a special type of nurturing that befits our species.

Mothers are silent soldiers whose ears are attuned to their kid’s weakest cries for help.  We are up all night rocking you when you have fever and cleaning up your vomit without a word.  We get up before dawn to take you to ice rinks, and stay up late to explain math.  We deliver the wished-for birthday gift and the perfect new outfit for the school dance.  We laugh with you, cry with you, and wait anxiously for college acceptance letters with you.  We are your hospital, your hotel, your restaurant and your 24-hour ATM.  In every aspect of your life, we have answered your call.  Now, please, answer ours.