Modes of Communication

Elizabeth Somebody or Other said having a child is like watching your heart walk around outside your body. Well my heart is now in the next room, rather than in DC. An almost ten-day visit (with a quick UK break) is truly something to be thankful for in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving as a day. I celebrate it as a way of life, having been given so very, very much.

I once published a poem where I said my daughter was 30, we’ve had 28 wonderful years, 5 and 13 are best forgotten. I can update that to: she is 38, we have had 35 wonderful years with 5, 13, and 36 best forgotten, still an overall good record.

Although my daughter and I talk almost daily over email, sharing the big and little stuff, I doubt if we would be laughing as much these few days if we hadn’t had good communication during most of our shared lives.

And it doesn’t just apply to my daughter. There are several friends I’m in almost daily contact with as we check out what is happening, sharing, sharing, sharing the details that give colour and music to our lives.

The subjects are as varied as the people. Be it my poet friend in Texas, whom I’ve never met but have talked to almost daily for the last 11 years, my baked bean and cassoulet friend who is often on another continent and sometimes across the table from me in misc. countries, my former Chaucer prof, my political friends, or my New York friend who pops across the ocean regularly, communication is important to maintain open lines.

There are others where there is a flurry of conversations, emails or visits when something important or interesting is happening and silence in between, which works well for the level of friendship that we have. And with some I’ve learned to respond to, but seldom initiate, especially if after most of my initiations there are neither answers nor origination of communications. Perhaps others do the same to me and that is all right, because it is impossible to maintain hundreds of close relationships. Friendship levels vary too.

This time together with my daughter, with us eating at her favourite restaurants, showing each other different databases, visiting mutual friends in Geneva, pointing out the changes in the city since she moved back to the US, teasing about how the cat suddenly deserted me for her becoming a grey and white fuzzy tumour attached to my daughter’s body, watching Commissar Rex together…It is all a reinforcement of what has been good in our overlapping lives as adults.

When I first moved to Switzerland, I was thrilled when I received a letter albeit not in one of the mailboxes in the picture (and I still do correspond with an old boss who is now in prison, but that is another story). Then faxes became the mode. Then emailing, Skyping, or messaging.And although I wish my daughter were still in Europe, I am thankful as we approach Thanksgiving how many modes of communication are open to us to maintain that contact that carried us through the good and (the minimal) bad times.