Ring-a-ling-a-ling. Today I’m talking about silence, but I’ll try to be quiet about it. You’d think it would be simple: silence is no sound. But it certainly isn’t simple when I think about my mom at 100 living with no sound because she is deaf. Her thoughts aren’t silent however, even though they don’t make any noise.
When Mom was born in 1910 Alexander Graham Bell had already held the first telephone patent for 34 years. I don’t know when her family first got a phone in Brooklyn, but I do know that when Mom and Dad moved to Connecticut they were given the number 9491. I remember when we first had to add a 9 to the number, when we added 66 and it became 966-9491, and then when the 203 area code was added. How many calls were sent and received over the years through this number? How many plans? How many messages of births and deaths? How many secrets? And now with Mom moving to an assisted living facility, that number that the family held for sixty-nine years is being discontinued. Tonight I called the number and left a message, perhaps the last one . Tomorrow the number will vanish for us, but we will still have the telephone memories, and maybe, just maybe those conversation are still floating around out there.
Life goes on. I wonder when 203-966-9491 will arbitrarily be assigned to another family?
When Mom was born in 1910 Alexander Graham Bell had already held the first telephone patent for 34 years. I don’t know when her family first got a phone in Brooklyn, but I do know that when Mom and Dad moved to Connecticut they were given the number 9491. I remember when we first had to add a 9 to the number, when we added 66 and it became 966-9491, and then when the 203 area code was added. How many calls were sent and received over the years through this number? How many plans? How many messages of births and deaths? How many secrets? And now with Mom moving to an assisted living facility, that number that the family held for sixty-nine years is being discontinued. Tonight I called the number and left a message, perhaps the last one . Tomorrow the number will vanish for us, but we will still have the telephone memories, and maybe, just maybe those conversation are still floating around out there.
Life goes on. I wonder when 203-966-9491 will arbitrarily be assigned to another family?