This technology thing is new to her. When she was this kid's age, telephones weren't in every apartment and every household. There was no such thing as a cell phone, and if someone had said it, people probably would have thought it was some kind of disease that only men in white lab coats with very powerful microscopes could diagnose.
She lived though eras that these kids read about in history books. She lived through the riots of the 50's (she remembered the black and white news footage of the ruins of Detroit, smoldering and glowing on her 12-inch television screen). She lived through segregation and its final days. She lived through the Free Love movement of the 60's when LSD and marijuana were just like taking a Tylenol. She was at Columbia University when the protests began, even though she was just an innocent bystander, mesmerized by the long hair and tie dye. She lived through the end of the Vietnam War and how mistreated the veterans were who came back to the country they so unwillingly fought for. She lived through the age of the disco and Studio 54. She saw the rise and fall of the Saturday Night Fevers and Stayin' Alives. She begrudgingly welcomed in the age of brightly colored lipstick, side ponytails, and bad, electronic music. She refused to accept the age of flannel and grunge.
And now, she finds herself in the 21st century, holding onto a device that she still can't comprehend, that responds to her body when she touches it. She can't resolve the gaps in her brain from when she was small to this very moment in time. All she knows is that her husband had somehow figured it out enough to leave her a quiet, unnoticeable note on this crazy, new gadget that told her he loved her. And she wishes, in this moment, that she could have told him that she loved him when he was still alive, and she's making a promise to herself that she's going to tell her son - her precious baby boy - that she loves him each and every day. And she's going to figure out how to use a video camera and she's going to figure out how to make a voice memo so that, come the day when her son is sitting down to tell his daughter about the parents who raised and loved him so, she will be able to see them and she will be able to hear them.
The thing of it is, is that she doesn't want to be remembered for great things. She knows that she hasn't done anything great in her life thus far, at least nothing worth noting. She's another face on another body, taking up space and breathing in this air.
But, aside from it all,
she just wants to be remembered.
