Ring, Ring

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. We are apart by 1200 miles. I haven't seen my mom face to face for over a year. I try and not complain since I am the one who moved so far away from friends and family. It is what it is. I do what I can to keep contact with those I love, and let the rest go. No sense crying over spilled mileage.
I talk to my mom by phone about four times a week. We are on opposite sides of most political issues, so that has been a regular topic of conversation lately. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? We argue about politics all the time. We catch up on family news, she usually has me on speaker, so I can give a shout out to my dad as he wanders in and out of the kitchen. We talk about what we have seen, who is doing what and general family business.
I guess I am used to the distance thing, now that it has been almost seven years since I moved. We have the phone so we take advantage of flat rates and cordless phones. I was laughing with a friend of mine about how in our lifetime we used to be tied to a cord attached to the kitchen wall. My dad installed an extra long cord when my sister and I were teens, so we could do the dishes and talk at the same time. We lived on the phone back then, waiting for the latest boy to call, hanging out in the kitchen or the family room, curled up on our Naugahyde bar stool, chatting away about absolutely nothing. Our phones were rotary phones back then, right after we invented fire. It was a major inconvenience to have friends with a lot of nines or zeros in their number. I thought twice about calling those people because just dialing their numbers took an incredible amount of time. There were no answering machines to leave messages on, just angst filled frustration at not being able to reach people. The phones weighed ten pounds, so you could use them to do curls with as well as contact your family members. I got a work out in just calling a few friends. When people refer to the good old days, I have to smile at how far in technology we have come. I recently signed up for video conferencing via Skype. I haven't used it once. I want my mom to sign up so we can actually see each other and I won't feel like I moved to the end of the earth, which living in Texas is how we feel, especially during hurricane season. When I was growing up my dad worked for the telephone company. Remembering my youth I recall when they came out with the idea of video phones back in the 70's. It was all so unbelievable back then. See someone while you are talking to them? It seemed all so unbelievable. What if you were in your bathrobe? What if it was your crush and you had no makeup on? What if you were innocently having cereal in the morning, just having woken up and your boyfriend called? My God, the trauma of it all was too much to think about.
That was during the time when bell bottoms were totally cool, people used the word "groovy" and foil metallic wall paper was all the rage. It was inconceivable to think of where we would end up in technology.
I called my mom the morning before her birthday. She wasn't home so I left the message, "Today is not your birthday. I just thought I should let you know." Being the family smart-ass in the family, I felt that I had to.
I woke up on Sunday,March 6 and called my mom. I wished her Happy Birthday and she laughed about the previous message. She was getting ready for church, just doing her usual Sunday thing. I paced the house, drank my coffee while talking to her, went outside, walked around the garden while chatting, thinking how much I missed my family. We said our good byes and I said what I say nearly every time I talk with my mom. "I'll talk to you soon, Mom". And I know I will, calling her again in a day or or two. Sometimes the guilt gets to me that my parents are aging and I am not around. I console myself with the thought that at least if I am going to be tied up in knots it's due to the guilt rather than the archaic dumbbell phones we used to have.