I finally found out why I couldn’t call my mother for almost a week. I called my sister to see if she had heard from her. She found the same thing I did: the phone rings and rings, but no one answers and the answering machine doesn’t pick up. She made a few phone calls, which I suppose I could have done, but generally the time difference means that I’m calling too late. I even talked to my sister for a few minutes, which I almost never do. We generally talk once a year at whatever holiday when we are both at our mother’s. I don’t think I saw her last year. She wasn’t able to make Thanksgiving, and that’s the only time I visited. We had a good laugh about mom’s inability to use cell phones. She has one, but never uses it. Neither one of us had the number. I lost it somehow with computer problems. Even if we had the number, our mother would have had to hear the phone to answer it and be able to get to it in time.

I got a call last night from my mother on her cell phone. It had been in her car for almost two weeks, which was when she went to visit my sister. My sister lives within driving distance. I don’t. So I found out first hand that her home phone has been out. I think it took her awhile to figure it out because she didn’t lose a dial tone until a few days after it didn’t ring through. Like I told my sister, she probably didn’t figure it out right away and was enjoying the silence. The phone still isn’t fixed. And even though she used her cell phone to call me, the call got dropped, and I wasn’t able to call her back. Her service is terrible, but then my service is terrible when I go there as well. When you live near nothing, cell phone signals don’t get there either.

My mother could have used her computer—it’s not tied to the phone line. But it never occurred to her. I have no idea how you can go a day without checking the computer for email—even if it is just to clean out the junk. My mother will go weeks or even a month between logins. My sister still sends email to her. I can’t see the point.