Give Me a Ring

A daily phone call, an occasional Facetime--either way, I'm lucky my sister is on the other end. She's a whippersnapper of a girl, I tell you, and for six long years, she lived far away. As far south as Miami, Florida and as far east as Stuttgart, Germany. It was tremendous suffering to endure the distance, made especially torturous by the time zone, but we still talked. In fact, we talked despite her reluctance to fix her microphone, resulting in conversations that only occurred in her minivan whether or not she was going anywhere.

These days, our phones reliably ring after one of us sends a text: "I have a new conspiracy theory."

Our contact begins with a golden nugget of substance--something we read or a realization we made--but it progresses into a dizzy trip down a lazy river and she's usually the one spinning the tube. We pause to have conversations with in-person humans in the room and return with a "go on" and around the bend we float. 

Google maps tells me we're only 9 miles apart, but since Covid-19 closed down the region, we've been confined to calls only. Walking by a playground today, I realized the last time I was there, we were together. We rode the giant-donut-spinner-thing with our kids, surfing circular waves round and round. 

I miss playing in person. Yet under the circumstances and the separation we've endured before, the phone will do just fine.