An Amazing Mother’s Day Gift: The Phone Call

It’s been 59 years since my mother picked up an old-school habit that still has her hooked: She sits down at her kitchen table several times a day, picks up the phone, and talks. And talks. And talks.

Sometimes she’ll talk while peeling artichokes or sinking her weathered hands into fresh dough. More often, she’ll talk with a fresh mint tea by her side, right next to an old booklet with hundreds of hand-written names and phone numbers, many of them scratched out and updated to the point that they’re barely legible.

That old booklet is her social bible. Anyone who has ever meant anything to her is in there. Siblings in Israel. Old friends from Casablanca. Neighbors who go to her synagogue; neighbors who don’t. And of course, immediate and extended family.

Those hundreds of names come to life when she hears their voices. That’s why my mother is still blown away by the same technology she got hooked on 59 years ago: the telephone. It’s the human voices that move her, that bring back memories, that trigger laughter. Yes, she dabbles in Facetime and loves to see real faces, but those are exceptions. Day in and day out, what she loves more than anything is to hear familiar voices.

She’s not into the communication fashion of our era—texting—for the obvious reason that she can’t hear voices on a text. She proudly calls that “old school.”

She’s so old school, in fact, that she does something that’s become quite rare: She answers her phone when it rings (and when she’s not napping). This reliability encourages her friends and family to call her, because they know she will answer.

Although she has a smart phone, she rarely uses it. She prefers the landline on her kitchen table, next to the old booklet and the fresh mint tea. During the endless months of COVID isolation, that old landline with mangled chords became her lifeline.

I’m sure if I asked her for a great Mother’s Day gift, she’ll say “Call me every day,” which of course I do.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers reading this.