20 Minute Aunt

She stumbled over “dejectedly”. I guess it has been years since I’ve thought about what a strange word it is. But is…strange. Dejectedly. It is strange enough to hear but how often do you see it written? She read on, recognized it when she saw it again but still struggled with the pronunciation. She did better with “precautionary” – sounding it out in its parts and then putting them all together triumphantly. Remembering it when she read it a few sentences later. 

My niece started off our skype session with so much enthusiasm. Be it the novelty of using skype (something we rarely do although I have no idea why) or at having a reading buddy, or maybe just to see her aunt who lives 2000 miles away…I have no idea. Whatever it was she smiled brightly and opened her book ready to read, “The Phantom Tollbooth”.

It is times like this that I am in awe of technology. For all of the ways people use it and think they are getting closer –posting selifes, checking in at restaurants, liking some statement or article or whatever – but are mostly just curating their life’s experience, sometimes true connection is possible.

The time my 90+ year old grandfather marveled that he was looking at and talking to me, an ocean and continent away, comes to mind. “Is that Nea Nea?” he asked, his voice steeped in wonder. He knew I was in Uganda and yet he could see me clearly and I was waving to him and asking how he was doing. Here is a man who remembers party-lines on phones, live operators, rotaries, heck – not having your own private home phone at all. And there I was, his granddaughter, speaking to him from someplace he’d never been.

 In the case of my niece, the connection is different. She only knows a world of immediate gratification and digital displays. She assumes everyone can FaceTime and is irritated that car radios don’t respond like Tivo.

My nieces are young and so conversational depth is limited. Once I find out how school is “fine”, what they learned “proper adjectives”, favorite parts of the day “lunch”, there isn’t much to keep us talking and they are easily pulled away by television shows, art projects, anything but the disembodied voice of their aunt. While I was in Texas for Christmas it was a little different. There were hugs. They showed me their rooms. We did a craft together and laughed and talked while doing other things. We grabbed lunch, they did my nails. But the phone is dimensionless and so when I am here – so very far away – we don’t talk extensively.

But one of my nieces has assigned reading – 20 minutes a day. Reading is something I love and listening to my niece read is something I can gladly do. Today was our first session, her with a physical book in hand and me with my kindle copy, we sat face to face and she read, sounding out words assiduously.

Her 20 minutes complete, I told her she could stop, “let’s read a little longer,” she replied. The smile on my face beamed brighter as we read a few more pages. Finally, she made a show of putting her bookmark in-between the pages of her book, we were done for the night. Behind her, one of her sisters danced into the frame, vying for some attention of her own. Books put away, all of my nieces drifted in and out of conversation with me, they showed me the finished craft product we started over Christmas, I showed them my apartment. It was an actual conversation, and for 45 minutes or so, it was like we were all right here…together.