1976: Nine o’clock on a Monday morning. A little boy with tons of energy and nowhere to put it is bugging his mother to let him go across the street to play. He believes his mother’s request to pick up his toys before he goes out is not reasonable. And, why would he? Because it’s time to play with friends whom he can already see on the driveway across the street through his parent’s bedroom window. And, for the past several minutes he has been at war with his mommy. To clean up his room would be to surrender. There will be no surrendering, he tells himself. What he hadn’t banked on was the strength of his mother who knows this routine better than he. And she has no intention of letting her son go anywhere until he does what he needs to do. For the first time in his life, he is told the words that he will hear for the rest of his youth… “There is freedom in obeying!”
The phrase does not win points. In fact, it makes the little boy so irritated that while his mother is in the bedroom, he picks up the phone and asks the operator to place a call to Miami, Florida. “I wanna talk to my grandma and get a plane ticket to leave. I wanna live with her ’cause my mommy is mean.”
The operator was intrigued. “Tell, me,” she queried, “How old are you?”
The little boy announced that he was four years old.
The telephone operator told him that she thought he should hang up and wait it out, because he couldn’t travel alone until he was a little bit older. This sounded logical. He accepted it. He hung up and went to his mother to inform her that the operator told him when he was old enough, he could fly to Grandpa and Grandma’s house to live “because you’re mean.” And he went to his room and picked up his toys.
1981: A mother who has just given birth to a fourth baby believes herself to be unable to raise a fourth child. She feels overwhelmed and alone. Her husband is working long hours and she has no family to help her while she works a job and cares for these children. In desperation, she calls mother and tells her that she believes she will be an unfit mother for this fourth child. She wonders if she should put her baby up for adoption; and she is riddled with guilt but doesn’t want her baby to suffer from her own inability to care the child. Her mother tells her, “Put your oldest on the phone now.” The daughter does so.
Her mother addresses her eldest grandson: “Your mom is exhausted and needs sleep. You are to take charge of your little brothers and the baby. You are to let your mother sleep until she awakens. If a problem arises, you take care of it. You’re ten years old; you can do this. Now put your mother back on the phone and get busy with your duties.” The boy puts his mother back on the phone. She addresses her daughter: “Hang up the phone and go lie down. Sleep. Your sons are in good hands. After you’ve slept call me back.” Her daughter hung up the phone and did as she was told.
She took off her shoes and crawled under the quilt. The sun shone into the bedroom and she slept. The children made the usual childhood sounds and she slept. The baby cried and she slept. Lunch came and went as her children dealt with life on a summer day, and she continued to sleep. She slept almost the entire day. At four o’clock she awoke to the sound of the TV in the family room and the laughter of her three eldest. She peeked in the nursery and saw her baby sound asleep. She called her mother.
“How are you feeling,” her mother asked.
“I’m better.”
“Can you handle things now?”
“Yes. I love you, Mom.”
“I know, sweetheart. You are a good mother; and I love you.”
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, could he have imagined the lives that would be affected in such a dramatic way? How many of us have picked up the telephone to have our lives changed forever? I myself learned of my brother’s death via telephone. I then phoned my mother and she learned the same way. My mother phoned me back when my father’s final illness came to pass, and I was able to comfort her via telephone before jumping in the car and driving to her. How many persons have dialed 911 and saved a life? How many freshman daughters have phoned home the first semester of college just to hear the voices of her loved ones, as she learns to live on her own?
The computer is marvelous. The Internet is amazing. But I shall always be grateful for the gift given us by Mr. Bell.
May you be blessed when the phone rings tonight… No solicitations!
Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple