The phone

Remember when you would curl the wire around your finger for hours? And you'd have to switch ears? And only if you were very lucky did you get one in your own room - otherwise you'd have to stretch the cord as far as it would go to get away from your mother in the kitchen. Remember that?

My first call from a friend came in the fifth grade from Sharon Felsenstein, who had blond hair with a blue ribbon worn as a headband and a deep voice. I must have had calls before but probably just to set up play dates or ask about homework. This was my first intentional, set up conversation. Perhaps I remember it so clearly because I ruined it. God- even in the fifth grade I was able to offend people out of friendships.

And in college, my grandmother would call every week. My mother never knew what to say on the phone, my dad was good but busy, so those calls from my grandmother sustained me through tough times. She would talk first and tell me what she and her friends were up to, mah Jong or canasta or someone died. And then my grandfather would get on and he'd tell me one of his monkey jokes, and then my grandmother - who would still be on the other extension- would tell him to get off because it was long distance. And I'd say, They deregulated, Grandma. There's no long distance any more! But she never listened. She'd tell him I didn't want to hear monkey jokes and he'd say, Ah, whaddayouknow?! And then the'd be off fighting and I'd hang up. God- I miss those phone calls.

Now all of my conversations have become two fingered typing flurries. And my kids will never have to learn to say "Hello, Mrs. Finkelstein, this is Dylan. May I please speak with Andrew?" And then wait patiently while Andrew is roused from his room or the basement or the backyard to come to the phone. Or perhaps to be told he is busy or is out, and could you please call back again later? Because of course they'll each have their own phones and their friends names will pop up like jelly beans and if they choose not to answer or text back, it'll be wordless, or at least soundless. No having your friends listen silently on the other extension to hear how the voice of someone who likes you likes you sounds, and glean potential from long silences or heavy breathing.

I find it all so sad. Sad for my kids, sad for me, sad for our culture of thumb and fore- fingered busy people, constantly connected, but always so thinly, loosely, surfacely. There's something so mediocre about it all. So unprivate, so general and banal and scary (someone can always go back and read your old texts). The diction is so staggeringly boring! I never have an interesting thought on text. I never have an epiphany. I never hold my idevice close and whisper things to Siri. But it's really good for making dinner plans.

I feel like lamenting this mediocre life, which is fine and honest and full of love and joy and hard work, too. It's fine. I make dinner. I make dinner plans. It's all fine. It's just not what I thought. It's many things I wanted: kids, career, friends, city living. It's just not what I thought when I was huddled on the landing of the front stairs, taupe cord stretched taut, my own hot breath hitting me in the face because my hand is cupped around the mouthpiece, my chapped lips grating against the little holes when my plans were so much bigger and so much smaller and so much mightier and more hopeful than dinner- that was only a thing my mother was cooking around the corner where the cradle of the phone waited patiently for its receiver, and I tried to hold off as long as possible from replacing it.