Rob and I first got
cell phones when I was expecting Anna back in 1996.
Rob was a student at Duke Divinity
School
I was in labor so he could come home
(or meet me at the hospital as it turned out to be).
We broke down and got
the phones we had said we wouldn’t waste money on getting
so I could call him
and tell him that his baby was on her way.
And it worked well
when the time came.
In fact, it was Rob’s
very first day back in class from summer.
He was in a class that was in a downstairs room in those buildings at
Duke that are built with those gorgeous stones.
The cell signal in those buildings in 1996 was almost non-existent,
especially with that
beautiful stonework and in the lower levels.
But I still got
through to him on the first try.
That never happened
again. He always had to go outside or at
least close to an upstairs window to call me every other time other than the
day that I was in labor with Anna.
I always called that
one a God smile!
So yesterday, as my
children and I were all getting new phones
for the first time in
3 years,
I was thinking
about how it had
really come full circle.
See, it was in this
same town where my children and I got our phones yesterday
that Rob and I first
got phones 19 years ago.
The building where we
got our phones then
was not far away from
where we got our phones yesterday.
Our cell phones are
in my name only now
and have been since
not long after Rob’s death.
But, for some reason b/c
I don’t want to change phone numbers,
his name cannot be
removed from part of the bill.
(At least that’s how they’ve explained the fact that every single
month, I have to see my dead husband’s name on the itemized part of each phone
number’s details).
So, as I saw Rob’s
name pop up on the bill yesterday,
it immediately made
me think back to the day
when Rob and I sat (with me very pregnant) in that phone
store
and signed our first
cell phone contract.
We were so excited.
Not excited so much
about getting phones.
They really were just
phones back then.
We were excited about
what those phones represented.
Those phones
represented our future.
They represented the
day our daughter would make her way into our world.
And it made the fact
that I was going to have a baby a little more real to me
and definitely made
it more tangible.
We talked about our
daughter the whole way back home that day.
It was a happy time.
That yesterday’s time
in a phone store
-with that little baby
girl who is now 3 months away from 19 years old
and who has finished
her first year of college-
brought back to mind.
It did not make me
sad.
It was fun to
remember that day.
It was fun to
remember that aspect of the waiting for Anna’s birth.
It made me smile.
For it made me
mindful and thankful that God has provided for me all along,
even down to cell
phones.
He provided 19 years
ago when Rob and I first got phones.
He provided when the
phone call got through to Rob when I was in labor.
And He provided now
for me to make good on what was really part of Christmas 2014.
New phones for all of
my children and me.
And He also provided
the prompt to write down the memory for Anna to read
about how her father
and I planned for her arrival
and were so thrilled
to even just think about that day!
I can’t say that I’ve
had much fun in cell phone stores since then.
In fact, my record
time in one is 5½ hours
when I was getting
new phones, switching our address,
and having to do all
of the paperwork of switching
everything over from
Rob’s name to mine when he died.
That was miserable!
But yesterday was
fun.
Watching my children
pick out and receive and play with
their new phones
yesterday was fun.
And, even though I’m
not going to write down who it was,
it was fun to notice
which child of mine said thank you first!
The process of
getting 4 new phones and switching
everything over from
old phones to new ones
did take a while – almost
3 hours –
but it was a fun
wait.
Anna actually used
their internet to do some research
for one of her summer
college classes that has started.
Luke just played.
And when I wasn’t
discussing with the representative
the amount of money
that was going to leave my bank account
for everything in this basket,
Wesley and I took
selfies and such.
It was a fun day!
I was blessed with watching my kids' faces light up and smile
over and over for the entire day as they played with their phones!
And lastly, as I'm learning to work my new phone,
I have been going straight to the experts...
...the 3 experts that I happen to have given birth to!
