When my mom moved back to my town 3 years ago, I was elated.
She had lived with my brother and his family for several years, hours away,
and I had deeply missed her.
I was thrilled to have her back around my girls and me, thrilled to think of things like her being around for regular family dinners.
Three years later, it has come to my attention, however, that there is one aspect of her living close that I was not planning for, and that aspect is:
Helping her with technology issues.
Now, I would not say I am a technological genius by any stretch of the imagination.
I know my way around a phone and a computer, but when it comes to routers and wiring things, I just kind of wing it, YouTube it, or pass it off to a teenager.
I did not go to school for IT for a reason,
so this means that her now frequent calls asking me to help diagnose a problem she is having, mixed with the fact that she is deaf in one ear, usually turns into a scene that looks like it could come from The Three Stooges.
ME: “Have you tried unplugging it? What about banging on it?”
HER: “What’s the spinny thing?”
ME: “What spinny thing?”
HER: “The thing that’s spinning. Ope. Now it’s blinking.”
ME: “I’ll be right over.”
HER: “What?”
ME: “I SAID I’LL BE RIGHT OVER.”
HER: “Why are you yelling?!”
I’m sure many wives would just hand this issue off to their husbands,
but with this type of thing, as shocking as it sounds,
I am the one with the most knowledge.
My husband cannot ever find the mustard, even though it’s on the same shelf in the same place every time, and is the only bright yellow bottle.
He cannot be expected to do diagnostics.
Yesterday I went to her house to help her hook up a new router.
I thought this should be a very straightforward operation.
The tech support had said to just plug it in, and then call the number for activation of the unit,
so I did just that, only, without activation yet, we had no phone signal.
Now what?
She does not have a landline.
I sent her out walking around her senior complex with her cell phone and the post-it with the number to call on it to see if she could get a signal while I stayed back, to watch if it started working.
I waited for a long time.
I could see her roaming around in circles, looping, mumbling, visibly frustrated.
This is a senior complex, so this kind of sight has the potential to alert the management.
“Code Red. We’ve got a roamer.”
Finally, she gave up, and came back to tell me she couldn’t ever get it.
We then had the idea to get in the car and drive to the top of the hill to see if we could get a few bars there, so we got in and headed up to a parking lot at the top of her complex.
After much trying, failing, finally getting through, and then holding for an eternity,
we got Jose on the line, and my mom turned her car on speakerphone.
(Apparently, so that we could both talk over each other to him)
We would come to find later that Jose was in Honduras, which would explain why his accent was thick and hard to understand.
This paired with my mom’s poor hearing as expected.
As you can imagine, this whole process went swimmingly:
Jose saying things we could only guess about,
having to name off long alphanumeric sequences,
my mom saying things over top of my answers, causing me to need to repeat them,
me picturing myself rocking in a corner, under a foil shock blanket.
Besides the fact that, when he asked the reason for the call originally, my mom had started with her entire origin story:
HER: “Well, it was the fall of 1947. The air was crisp, and there was a sense that something was coming…”
I interrupted her.
ME: “We need to activate a modum.”
next Jose told us that “all he would need was for us to read him the numbers off the bottom of the new modum.”
The modum that was back down the hill in the house with no service.
We opted to drive back down the hill slowly, hoping to keep the call,
and we pulled into her parking spot, holding our breath.
If we lost this call we’d never find Jose again. Back to the drawing board.
We were already invested in Jose.
We already felt like we’d been through some things together.
We had gotten pretty attached to him.
Without explaining every minute to you, I will just tell you that the activation of this box almost took a pair of hiking boots, a pair of duck-hunting overalls, a degree in engineering, and a sherpa.
I kept having to get out of the car, trek back to the house to do some new task, while my mom stayed on the line with Jose, pretending that she understood him.
I’d report back one thing, then get sent back for another.
The sky began to grow dark.
In the distance – a coyote.
I wondered if I’d ever get dinner.
At one point, an ambulance and a fire truck showed up for one of my mom’s neighbors,
and at first, when I saw them, I thought maybe they were coming for one of us.
Maybe we’d been trapped, and this whole thing was an illusion created by our subconscious.
Maybe this was me going towards the light.
I felt a sense of relief in that thought.
There’s no need for a Wifi connection in Heaven.
After a VERY long, complicated time, we finally got the situation settled.
We bid Jose a nice day. I *think* he said something about a survey.
At this point, we might invite him and his family to come for Thanksgiving.
Maybe I should go back to school, become a computer tech, or an electrician…
I have a feeling “That spinney thing” is going to be a large theme of this next decade,
if these last three years are any indication.
I’m still so happy my mom is back living close to me.
I just didn’t think about the technology portion of living close to aging parents.
I think it might be an actual life-phase:
Birth,
Growing up,
Teenage years,
Marriage,
Children,
Grandchildren,
Help your parents with technology,
Getting help from your kids with technology,
*Curtain*
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
