Sunday Phone Calls

Phone calls with my parents used to happen on Sundays. I’d call my father or he’d call me, and we’d exchange trivial information about recent events – about who had a cold, and who had gotten an A on a test, and where we’d driven the day before, and whatnot. Occasionally important things were said, but not very often. I didn’t trust my father’s advice very much. He meant well, but I thought he didn’t know enough about life, or about my life, to steer me right. Sometimes I purposely did the opposite of what he said, on the theory that that was more likely to work. But I enjoyed talking to him about my kids and my work, and finding out how he was doing in his post-divorce life.

Phone calls with my mother were more problematic: so many boring complaints. But I liked it when we talked about the characters in our family, their meshuggener histories, her sharp acerbic assessments.

Now that they’re dead, I sometimes have a funny feeling on a Sunday morning: “It would be nice to talk to Dad on the phone today.” Yesterday morning I even caught myself thinking in the old half-annoyed way, “Maybe Mom will call this morning.”

Sometimes I imagine my kids, in the future, thinking the same thing about me.

While I’m writing this, Agent 95 zips into my study and points a finger at me: “It’s my archnemesis, Dadman!”

He’s already learned what I never did: to take it comically.