A new way to chat.
My friend’s mum is getting married. She’s eighty-seven, (the mother, not the friend). There are discussions to be had, arrangements to be made and as, like me, my friend comes from a large family, for ease of communication a WhatsApp group chat has been formed, called ‘The Wedding.’
And perhaps inevitably, given the age of the bride and the lack of a Last Will & Testament in place, very quickly after this chat was formed, ‘The Wedding 🙄’ was formed.
Not everyone in the first group was invited to join the second group.
My phone is full of such chats, not quite divided by the simplicity of 🙄, but still divided.
I have a Swedish Chat for example, which is just me and my parents.
There’s a Family Chat, which is my immediate family. Me, my parents and my siblings. Most of the time it trundles along quietly. A Saturday afternoon exchange between my brother in Canada and my Dad in England discussing the football results. A photo my sister in New Zealand might post of one of her kids in a school play, or at a sporting event. A round-robin exchange of temperatures accompanied by photos of thermometers on window-ledges. Quietly manageable digital small talk … And then my older sister will go on holiday and the chat becomes a snake that has swallowed a horse. My phone lights up like the end-of-pier show, blinging non-stop as she dumps wall- to-wall pictures of crumbling churches, windswept dogs on windswept walks and selfies of herself, flushed with red wine and happiness, making the most the Airbnb hot tub. No wonder no one sells postcards anymore.
I have a Sibling Chat – self-explanatory.
A Twin Talk Chat which was me and my twins, but has become defunct since my youngest got his phone and can’t be left out.
A Breakfast Walking Crew Chat, which tends to burst into life early in the morning and a Tennis Group Chat, which seems to double in size every week, so I now have something like 743 unread messages. I’d like to leave. Slink off into the night unnoticed and with so many members I doubt I’d be missed. But like a smug tell-tale, WhatsApp will sidle up and whisper in the ear of the admin and as the admin is a personal friend and I was an original member, it’s difficult. I suppose it’s better than it used to be. Until recently, any departure from these groups was greeted with all the subtlety of the MC at the end of an Elvis show: CARY HAS LEFT THE GROUP!
There have been innumerable Birthday Party Chats and a few Class Parents Chats. These, thankfully are getting fewer. Thank goodness I never had to be a part of Breastfeeding for Beginners Chat, or Let’s Compare Our Babies Milestone Chat. I know they exist. They must do.
There’s a Need to Discuss Further Chat, which I think is between me and one of my siblings, obviously about something that needed to be discussed further, and more to the point separately.
There’s been a few Christmas Chats. I know someone who was asked to admin a friend’s Wedding Chat, a group that consisted of eighty people – eighty! - all discussing gifts and travel arrangements. Never again was the polite version of her response when I asked.
I have numerous Girls Lunch in Town, Lovely Girls, Dinner Chats. All self-explanatory, all as emperhal and brief as a mayfly. All quite lovely to look back upon. A little like old photos.
My daughter has set up an International Chat to document her travels in Bali. She invited me, her brothers and her grandparents, but not my soon-to-be-ex-husband. It’s her choice. She didn’t think grandma and granddad would be comfortable. It’s interesting isn’t it, the way real life tensions and maneuvers slip seamlessly into online stuff.
And there’s a Grandchildren Chat for my mum and her ten grandchildren who are scattered all over the world. As I set this up on her phone, she is the administrator, which is a bit leaving the lunatics in charge of the asylum – I probably can’t say that anymore, but you know what I mean. Never mind, it couldn’t be helped and at least she can now message her grandson in New York, to ask him how to switch off the torch on her phone when she’s used it to navigate her way to the bathroom at three am.
This Grandchildren Chat is littered with love heart emojis. Littered with them! My mum uses them prolifically. In fact, since she got her phone a scant two years ago, her use of them has grown exponentially. There are emojis that blow kisses, that laugh until they cry. Sometimes a unicorn, lots of golden stars and yes, hearts. Big fat red hearts and floating pink hearts. It’s almost as if the older she gets, the less time she knows she has, the more hearts she needs to send out. And it hasn’t stopped there. She regularly ends messages to all of her grandchildren with Love you.
Now I can count on one finger the number of times she’s said that out loud to me. Same with my father. And this is not an admonishment. My parents were born in 1937. I know that their parents, born at the turn of the 20th century, would have gone to their graves, without uttering the phrase.
We hear that so much these days, don’t we? Tell your loved ones that you love them. I do. My son can barely go to the toilet without our customary exchange. Love you. Love you more. And it’s great. But if we lost the power of speech – or emojis - tomorrow it wouldn’t matter. We would find a way.
And this is what is so interesting to me. One of the most famous mantras in the writing world is the show don’t tell mantra. It’s much more effective to have a character slam a door and hence show their anger, than to have them, or me as the ‘narrator’ say X was angry. And so it is in real life. Words are hard. Acts of love are always easier. A cup of tea in bed, a lift when it’s raining, a favorite meal cooked.
So it has been nothing short of a revelation to watch my mother learn this new way to chat. And as it has overlapped into our family group - me , my siblings, my parents - she has become more confident, more accustomed to the sound of it. Routinely she will type: You look lovely – under a photo I might send. Or, That’s a beautiful outfit, to my sister. Well done. We’re proud of you. Enjoy yourself, You deserve this, Good idea. Wise choice. You’re doing great.
Words don’t come easy. Especially when you were never shown how to pronounce them. What a revelation then to see her finally able to say what she means, even if it is with the help of a few 😂🥰🌟⭐️🌟⭐️🧡🧡🧡
Until next time,
Cary
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