The electrical unit in our house was recently rewired, and in the process my husband had a landline phone installed. So now, next to my laptop in the downstairs den, there lies a cheap, dinky little Radio Shack telephone. It doesn’t ring often. Or at least I don’t hear it since it isn’t located in the main part of our home.
However, on occasion (like during an historical eclipse) when the faithful old landline does makes itself known, you can bet it’s either one of two people: a) a telemarketer or b) my mother. Although she is perfectly capable of sending a text message, she still insists on calling our landline phone from her landline phone. But I’ve recently realized something: In the ‘80s and ‘90s, when my siblings and I were growing up, my mother’s landline was her lifeline.
Nevermind iPhones, in those days even caller ID was yet to appear in the limelight, and there was nothing more mysterious, anticipatory—or competitive—as the game of ‘Who Is on the Other End of that Revolutionary Tethered Device?’ My brother, sister, and I would race to the phone, simultaneously yelling “I’ll get it!” Occasionally it was “for me,” a friend inviting me over; likewise, one of my siblings’ friends. Sometimes my father’s co-workers or old buddies would phone in, but mostly the mystery voice on the other side was looking to talk to my mother.
She would chat for hours on the kitchen telephone without ever missing a beat. She’d cook full course meals, fold four baskets worth of laundry, write complete, novel-length grocery lists, stack dirty dishes in the dishwasher, pack our school lunches—all while on the phone. She would go as far as the cord would allow her to go, which wasn’t too far past the dining room; if the call was a particularly private one, she’d stretch that cord to its capacity, locking herself in the half-bathroom near the back door. Those phone conversations encompassed a world I wasn’t a part of, a piece of my mother that didn’t involve me, which made eavesdropping all the more intriguing.
Looking at the measly land line on my desk, it occurs to me that my own daughter will never aptly listen to those enticing one-sided phone conversations between a friend and myself. It’s not something I’m proud to admit, but it’s 2015, and text messaging is my main form of communication. Sure, she’ll watch me tapping away on my cell, and I’ll bet money that she’ll nuzzle her way in and try to read those elusive texts. Plus, there will be plenty of real-life exchanges that she’ll oh-so-subtly absorb. I’ll have the occasional phone conversation with a long lost pal, of course, and I’m sure my daughter will soak it in as much as possible.
However, I doubt I’ll ever spend the better part of the evening gabbing on the landline as my daughter sits on the kitchen stairs in awe of a part of me that she’s unfamiliar with, a strange concoction of a woman who gossips about adult-like things with friends while concurrently folding my clothes, preparing my meals, and cleaning my messes. She’ll never witness the multiple sides of me—her mother—interplay while that curly cord stretches, pulls, and dangles a precarious mere centimeters above the cat’s water bowl.
But kids are resilient and creative, and despite changing times our coming-of-age experiences remain fixed, yet malleable. My baby will find other ways to observe me in wonderment as a woman who is both her mother, yet someone else completely.
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