It’s late afternoon. I’ve forgotten to eat lunch. I’m considering making a sandwich when my phone buzzes. It’s my firstborn kiddo calling from overseas. How nice!
One minute into the call he says, “Hey Mom, don’t you have WhatsApp?”
“I think so,” I say. “What color is it?”
“What?”
“What color is it on my phone? The app icon. I think I downloaded it once but tell me what color to look for.”
“Green,” he says. And I can just imagine him shaking his head, rolling his eyes, and allowing a little smirk I know so well to spread into a tolerant smile.
“Got it,” I say.
“Great. I’ll call you on it,” he says, then hangs up.
Two minutes later, nothing. I’m waiting. I’m waiting. I’m waiting. I’m poking around in the app, irritated at questions that I know I answered months ago. And I’m scowling. And waiting. Hell, we should have stayed on the phone. Speaking of which, he buzzes on the phone again and I answer.
“Mom,” he says, “What’s the problem?” He’s annoyed.
“It’s asking me for all kinds of information,” I say.
“You have to answer everything it asks. And say yes.”
Yes? Never my default position to any application on any device…
“Say yes to all of it,” my son continues. “How else could WhatsApp call your number or use your camera?”
Good point, I think. So I fill out some info and tick off some yesses and then my son (miraculously!) pops up on my small screen. Hallelujah! And it appears he’s standing in his kitchen on the other side of the Atlantic.
It’s dinnertime in the U.K. His back is to me as he chops and mixes and spices and stirs, then turns to face a device — and me — and smiles.
“Wow! I love the change in mustache,” I say. “Very 1975.”
He chuckles as I marvel at how lovely it is to see his face, how I’ve longed to see his face (and his brother’s) — has it really been nearly a year? — and I remain entertained by the facial hair that always surprises. Let’s see… he’s gone from clean-shaven to stubble, from handlebar mustache to a Clark Gable style, from scraggly whiskers with a soul patch to this… well, to this almost “classic” mustache that looks… fantastic! Not quite Tom Selleck, 1985. 1975? Yup, it fits.
And oh how he resembles my sweet father, taken too young, too soon, and still missed.
“You look so much like my dad,” I say. I’m fighting back tears.
My son grins. Neither of my children ever knew my dad. He died before I married. And while he wasn’t around much when I was growing up, we had forged a strong, loving bond when I was in my late twenties, after my parents’ divorce. His love for me was gentle and unconditional; the place he held in my heart was immeasurable. His death was a blow that left me fractured for a very long time. Fragile. Off-balance. I was still deep in the well of grief when I met the man who would become my husband. So intense was my need for connection, for family, for building a family of my own that I chose to minimize the warning signs — hardly unusual with or without the emotional toll of working through loss — but never a good idea. Looking back, I recognize that my willingness to turn away from small incidents and incompatibilities would eventually become more troublesome.
And yet… the gift of my marriage is and always will be my boys. My beautiful, irrepressible, quirky, complex, loving, independent, good-hearted boys. Whatever it took to bring them into the world and raise them on their path to becoming good men was worth it. All of it, worth it.
“You also have a bit of Mémé in you,” I say, at moments seeing my former mother-in-law in the broad cheekbones and the fine nose. But the hairline and forehead! The eyes and brows! Especially when he smiles, the resemblance to my father is uncanny.
“Yes, you really are the image of my dad,” I say.
“I know,” my son says, suddenly more animated than usual. “Did you see that picture I found on Ancestry of him when he was young? Did you see how much I look like him?”
I nod. How strange (and cool?) it must be for my son to see his face in a photograph that is 70 years old. How bittersweet it is for me.
As we continue our visit, I am reminded of the year we Skyped routinely when he was in college in Switzerland. At the time, since he loves to eat well, he was teaching himself to cook. Then, too, we chatted across an ocean, kitchen to kitchen, frequently when he was trying out some recipe and posing a few relevant questions in between mentions of subatomic particles and supercolliders.
I am reminded of trying to keep track of his comings-and-goings during his teenage years when he was wandering the EU with his cousins. For that matter, there were several years when both my kids were crisscrossing this country or Europe, and all I could do was hope good judgment (and a bit of luck) would keep them safe.
I am reminded of the remarkable child he was, so much an adult even at six or eight or ten, the way he would make me a turkey sandwich when I was tired from too much work and too little sleep; the way he bandaged up his little brother’s scrapes and cuts so I wouldn’t need to, at the time wanting to become a doctor; his promise to “never leave home” or at most to build a small house in our backyard where he would live one day with his own family, this so I would never be alone and he would always be close by.
So many memories, so many years traveled, so many generations honored in that face.
Missing him, missing his brother — the ache is palpable.
But this is here and now and I tuck away the emotion, out of sight. Instead, I ramble on about what’s keeping me busy these days — there’s always something to learn — and I ask for the details of his bout with COVID-19 months ago. He tells me he felt like he had a cold except for the weird experience of no smell, yet one of his flatmates, also young and healthy, was far sicker as he battled the virus.
“We’re back in lockdown, you know,” he tells me, turning again to the stove to check on dinner.
“I know,” I say. I make a point of paying close attention to what’s happening where both he and his brother live.
As the conversation comes to a close, my son tells me we can conference with his brother next time we WhatsApp, and I’m delighted at the thought. I make a mental note to install the app on my iPad so I can enjoy the experience on a larger screen. And I try my best to look forward to our next digital visit, this time the three of us, whenever we can manage it and hopefully before and during the December holidays. I try my best to look forward to everything I can; so many hearts are breaking with loss this season. So many losses. So much compassion that we, each of us, must extend to one another any way we can.
How are you staying in touch with family and friends these days? Are you getting together or following guidelines to stick only to your current household? How are you dealing with the inevitable losses of this devastating year?
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