Hello, it's me

No one calls my cell phone as often as my mother. Even the ring sounds different when she calls; it's more insistent, chirpy even.

We talk almost daily, not counting the times we hang up, then one of us thinks of something unsaid and calls back. 

The last time that happened was the other night when she told me during a conversation that she had watched the movie "Picnic." "Oh, that William Holden was gorgeous," she said. But she couldn't remember the name of one of its supporting players. By the time she called back barely a minute later, I had already looked it up. (Gotta love the Internet Movie Database.)

She had the harder job: remembering without help: It was Rosalind Russell.

Even when I miss Mom's calls, it's entertaining. The voice mails are full of detail rather than just a simple, "Call me back when you get a minute." 

She often uses the third person, as in, "This is mother, honey. Give me a call." 

Here's another, a call to me while I was on vacation in the Pacific Northwest: "I hope you're having a wonderful time. Give mommy a call when you get a chance."

That message came after I had already checked in with her to let her know we had arrived safely. My siblings and I have to do that when we get where we're going, even if it's just to the shore.

She often calls when she's headed out somewhere, or when she gets home from wherever she's been.

"I just wanted to let you know that it's 8:45 and I'm home. I had a nice time. Talk to you tomorrow."

If she expects me to call and I don't, the message will go something like this: "Christina, I was waiting for you to call me. Talk to you later. Bye."

If she's sitting idly somewhere and gets bored, I might hear: "Hi sweetheart. I'm sitting in the car waiting for your brother to come out of the store and I just wanted to see how you're doing."

Or this one, what you might call not letting a wait go to waste: "Hello sweetheart, I'm just sitting in the lobby of the apartment waiting for your sister. She's going to pick me up at 4 o'clock, so I found a coloring book and crayons in the mail room, so I'm sitting her coloring."

Some calls are simple. "I just wanted to ask you a question. Give me a call back." On one of those calls back, she asked me if I had Hula. (She meant Hulu.) A blast from the past recently caused her to evoke Philly's favorite DJ: the Geator Gator. (Meaning, of course, the Geator with the Heater, Jerry Blavat.)

Our conversations sometimes meander; when you talk to someone just about every day, you might not be entirely fresh. Then again, our talks aren't limited to one subject. And when she's really on a roll, giving her opinion on how we raise her grandchildren or complaining about the lack of maintenance at her apartment complex, it can be hard to "get a word in edgewise," as she would say.

But that's ok. Because almost every word is precious when your mother is 87. I'm not inclined to agree with everything she says, but the sound of her voice is a blessing. And the phone is to her what Twitter was to Donald Trump: oxygen. The fact that the "oxygen" is at her side or in her purse all the time, only means she can breathe it frequently and with fervor.

Her mother, my grandmother, was also often holding a phone, usually in her dining room where she had a little nook carved out for herself with a covered radiator for her phone stand.

When my mother was in a conversation that seemed to go on forever, when we had to limbo our way past a phone cord stretched across the kitchen to get to the refrigerator in the morning, it was usually my grandmother on the other end.

Even after a day that can be pretty long at her age, Mom sometimes doesn't go to sleep without checking in.

"This is mommy honey (as if I wouldn't know her voice) I'm getting ready for bed; in fact, I'm in bed right now, so I just wanted to say goodnight. All right dolly, I love you. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Bye-bye."

Grandmom called us dolly, too. And like my mother's voice on the phone now, it was music to the ears.     

The author's grandmother