My phone has been on quite an adventure this week,
it scrambled to listen to another phone running skype
to translate an older woman’s excited Russian
as she got to speak to her niece. I miss you I miss you
I love you through the computerized voice from the
other side of the world. The letters that I will never
know how to read run across the screen with ease,
my translating app speaking Russian, hers speaking English
to watch her niece’s face light up with such joy. Across
the planet, but today they sit together on the kitchen
counter, talking about their children, and coming back.
Two days before, my phone reached to Norway, to a best
friend studying abroad, they have a potato day celebration
she tells me, I get a few days off of school because they harvest
the potatoes. To measure our nine hour time difference,
my phone keeps a two-sided clock on its screen, to remind
me of the hours in Oslo. Today, I get to see the adventures,
the way the leaves change by the library on a campus I’ll never
set foot on, the window of a coffee shop I’ll never
drink from, but I’ve been there with her, in the Snapchats
and messages, the descriptions and the letters. With Love from Oslo
We pop into Nashville for just a minute, Guess who’s getting married!
A baby was born yesterday! Just an update, hope you’re well…the world
keeps turning across time zones and continents, the college coworkers
grew up, and our old boss smiles remembering the Fresno summers,
still a part of the excited community that takes a moment to send
well wishes for a coworker’s new baby boy, born yesterday, father’s
face captured in a smile that all of our now scattered staff celebrate
with him, community temporarily restored, still together when it counts.
I get to make daily trips to Denver, to the friend who graduated and leaves
for home, I promise not to let this drop and ten months later, the updates
still come in. Look at my dog today!!! Oh and it’s snowing, I know Fresno
doesn’t have weather but in case you wanted to see some. Suddenly I’m
looking out of the apartment window at a frozen moment when outside
mine it’s still 80 degrees. A thousand miles away we still have the privilege
of talking about the weather.
Today my heart is scattered a thousand miles in every direction,
pieces all over the world, reaching out to the cities, and countries
that hold the people I love, bringing them close for just a moment,
transcending miles, time zones, oceans, and continents to spend just
a few seconds laughing together, discussing the daily moments, the same
experiences, and somehow we get to share these things, instantly, completely,
voices, photographs, reactions, advice, laughter, all of it sparking up in a little
LED flash of blue light, New Message.
