Happiness is finding magic in the everyday
Originally Posted At the Boston Globe
By Beverly Beckham
August 2, 2009
We were on vacation at Rock Harbor waiting for the sun to set - my grown children and their young children, all of us way out on a jetty, the sky pink, the night clear, the bugs, for the moment, somewhere else.
A steel band was playing, calypso music; not Old Cape Cod, but it was nice, festive.
The little kids didn’t stay still for long, though.
Why sit and watch the sun when there are rocks to be climbed and sand to be raced through? They chased each other over boulders, skipping and hopping and laughing. They slid down the side of a huge flat rock onto the sand until their skin was chafed. They balanced on smaller rocks, all of them ignoring the “Be careful’’ and “Stop running’’ warnings of a concerned grandmother who had “911’’ pressed into her cellphone “just in case.’’
The sun takes a long time to call it a day when you’re holding your breath and anticipating disaster. “The kids are fine, Mom,’’ my daughter kept saying. And they were. But I wasn’t.
When her cellphone rang and it was for my 5-year-old grandson Adam, I actually thought, “Saved by the bell,’’ because he stopped running and stood still for maybe 90 whole seconds.
His dad had called to say goodnight and Adam matter-of-factly told him where he was and what he was doing and that, yes, he missed him, too.
“Do you want to talk to Charlotte?’’ he said, handing the phone to his 2-year-old sister. Both of them were totally unaware that for thousands and thousands of years, for most of civilization, what they were doing - saying goodnight to a person 400 miles away on a device the size of a playing card - had been impossible.
“You know, when I was your age there weren’t any cellphones,’’ I told Adam after he hung up. I may as well have told him there was no sun.
“So how did you talk to people, Mimi?’’ he asked, so stunned that although his friend Matty was calling for him, he didn’t race away.
“We had pay phones,’’ I said, then explained how they were big black things that were bolted to a glass booth or to a wall somewhere. And how you had to look for them because they weren’t everywhere. And how you had to put money into them, coins, not dollars, then dial and hope that someone answered because there was no way to leave a message.
“You’re kidding,’’ he said.
I lost him then. A phone that you put money in he could imagine. But not being able to leave a message? I swear the boy shuddered as he walked away.
He returned to playing on the rocks with his cousin and his friends until the bugs started biting. We headed to the car, fastened our seat belts, and went off in search of ice cream.
A week later we were home, vacation over, and Adam’s mother was back at work when she got a text that said, “Adam.’’ A minute later she got another text that said “Charlotte.’’ “Matt,’’ “Dog,’’ “I love Mom,’’ “Lucy,’’ and “ABCDEFG’’ followed.
She called home. Adam answered. “Are you playing with Daddy’s cellphone?’’ she asked.
“How did you know?’’ Adam said.
“Because you’ve been texting me.’’
“Way’’ she answered. “You know how you wrote Adam and Charlotte and Matt? Everything you’ve written you sent to my phone.’’
“Wow, Mom. That’s cool. Hey, Daddy! Guess what?’’ he yelled. “I know how to text.’’
Sunsets and cellphones. For children and adults of a certain age, too, there’s a little bit of magic in each.
Canton resident Beverly Beckham can be reached at bevbeckham@aol.com
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