No One To Call

Plus March Events!

In late August of last year, my husband and I dropped off our daughter Rebecca (our youngest child) at college. After a successful move in somehow managing to fit the contents of the overstuffed Amazon bags, plus the under the bed bins and framed collages of pictures in a room she would share with another girl for her freshman year, we said our goodbyes on the first floor common room of the dorm. My husband and I walked out of the dorm hand in hand, a bit shell shocked at something we had planned to do for 18 years, down the giant hill to our then seemingly empty and quiet SUV.

Once settled into the car ride home, my husband called his parents to let them know that Rebecca was getting settled into her new college life. We talked to them on speaker phone in the way I used to talk to my grandparents decades ago when I called them from the library payphone in college as they asked questions of my goings on and whereabouts. After tag teaming the phone call with my in-laws answering their questions about the size of the room (small), the roommate (a great girl), the goodbye (Rebecca was ready to start with the orientation program, we lingered longer in our hugs) and then we had our usual banter about the ride home including traffic, “Google Maps knows the best route." We ended the call.

I sat for a moment with my thoughts ignoring the list of saved podcasts I imagined we would listen to on the way home.

“I have no one to call,” I said to my husband in my not so usually cheery voice.

My mom died over twenty years ago. She never knew Rebecca and Rebecca never knew her. They shared a name and also almost identical blue sparkly eyes and freckled cheeks.

My dad died the summer before Rebecca’s senior year in high school. We called him from the car on the ride home after visiting the campus that would become Rebecca’s during her junior year of high school.

“She liked it,” I told my dad on speaker phone as we navigated our way back to the main roads.

“It’s a hilly campus,” my dad said recalling visiting the same university back when he was looking at colleges in 1958. It was indeed. My calves could feel it after the tour.

An image flashed through my mind of my parents dropping me off at college on a similarly sunny August day in 1992. We packed my flannel shirts, sweaters and CDs into duffel and garbage bags, filling the back of my mom's wood paneled Chevy station wagon and then unloading the car in front of my freshman dorm — not on a hilly campus, but a busy city street. My mom chatted up the student volunteers who were helping us as my dad headed down to the pick up point for my Apple II Plus computer which we ordered through the university.

“You have so many people to call,” my husband said to me from the driver’s seat of the empty SUV.

He was insistent “I don’t know a person who has more people to call than you.”

I smiled and even giggled. As much as I wanted to feel sorry for myself in that moment, I knew he was right. My mom used to say I collected friends and never let them go — some from childhood and college and others she would never know. And then there was my extended family. I have been called the mayor of the family on more than one occasion.

Once back out of the cell phone dead zone in the hills near campus, I made a few calls — to a close friend from college who has become an aunt of sorts to my daughter, then to my actual aunt, who has become a mother of sorts to me, to my brother/my kids’ adoring uncle and to a few others. I filled them in on the details I wished I could share with my parents: The sophomores carried her stuff up three flights of stairs and they were so cute and friendly. The dorm room is tiny (how did we ever live in a room like that with a roommate and all of our stuff?!) but it looks lived-in already and is mostly set up. The hallway bathroom is kind of gross. The roommate is great and she and Rebecca seem like old friends already. The fridge has a mini microwave on top. Rebecca seems really excited and happy and just the right amount of nervous. And yes we are okay. I could feel my husband’s smile on me as he listened in on speaker phone. He tells me he gets a kick out of even snippets of my phone conversations.

I’ve been a phone person dating back to my early teenage years when my parents gave in to getting a second phone line after one too many episodes of me stretching the cord from the kitchen wall phone on to the stairway landing for some attempt at privacy. I adored my very own piano touchtone phone plugged into the wall on the new line. It sat on a small antique telephone table in the corner of my childhood bedroom next to my overstuffed pink and white striped “talk on the phone” chair. If only that chair could talk.

My kids make fun of me for still having actual phone conversations with friends and family members. Apparently at the dawn of the second quarter of the twenty first century, phones are meant to be used for texting, DMs, FaceTimes and planned work calls only. I guess I’m a phone purist? A throw back? Talking to the people who I love on the phone is in so many ways how I feel this love and give it too — a phone love language of sorts? I’ve moved way beyond the confines of the plugged into the wall piano phone taking my gestures of love with me wherever my iPhone goes any time of day or night.

My phone. It’s come a long way since the piano touchtone phone in my childhood bedroom and the corded wall phone on the kitchen wall.

I have repeated my husband’s words “you have so many people to call” to myself several times since we dropped Rebecca off at college. I have told this story to a few friends when they were feeling lonely for whatever reason, sometimes in fact over the phone, reminding them that they have people to call and that I am for sure one of those people. I think they took these words to heart. I know that I have.

When I am missing my mom or my dad or both of them, I think of the people I have to call. They are not replacements for my parents. No one ever could be, but they are pretty awesome people who I feel forever grateful to have in my life. They make the giant hole left by my parents’ death more full. They make my life feel full. They make me feel full and good and so happy that I have them on my to call list.

I don’t always call them. Sometimes just knowing that I can call them is all I need.

March Events

Come join me in conversation with authors and friends Amy Blumenfeld, Alix Strauss and Rebecca Raphael on Monday night March 10th at Temple Beth Israel in Port Washington, NY. Register at link here.

Next up on Tuesday March 25th at 2pm, I will be on a panel with more friends and authors Lisa Barr, Talia Carner, Samantha Greene Woodruff, Jacqueline Friedland and Amy Blumenfeld moderated by Debbie Reed Fisher at The Levis JCC in Boca Raton Florida. Register at link here.