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.