Replying to Mom’s email too slowly to suit her

I miss my mother most at Christmas, but spring is the runner-up. The 17-year anniversary of her death is later this month, and there’s Mother’s Day a little later.

Mom had only really just gotten online when she died. She would “e” me from time to time, which is what she called email (presumably, turn-of-the-millennium AOL lingo). Only rarely did she not use that term. As she clearly thought she was using a bona fide cool kids term, I never told her that she was literally the only person in the entire world I ever heard call it that.

She was gone before I ever got to see exactly how our electronic communication habits would develop, but there were alarming signs early on. I can remember her emailing me once asking me this and that about getting together in a month or two, and then following it up with “why haven’t you answered me?” only about two hours later. “Because I’m a rotten son…” I replied. That irritated her a bit. Seems like she may have adjusted her expectations after that, though how grudgingly I couldn’t tell you.

I suppose it still might have been fine. We had enjoyable telephone conversations of perhaps semimonthly frequency, so there was precedent for her to communicate reasonably. Of course, texting wasn’t a thing yet, nor was Facebook. Tough to call those. Wish I had her here to see.

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