I'm Grateful!

I am in Reno, Nevada. D2’s son is playing his tenor sax at a Jazz festival tomorrow and we came to hear him compete with his school’s jazz ensemble. He is very talented and we have never had the opportunity to hear him play except via the Internet (which we are very grateful for). But tomorrow we get to hear him in person.

All of this has made me even more thankful for technology. When Mr. J and I had only been married  three years, we went to Germany to live for a year. The cost of long-distance telephone conversations then were extravagant and since my parents never had much money we lived that whole year with only a few letter passing back and forth between and never hearing their voices. 

When we left home my dad had the same brown crew cut that he’d had for twenty years. One day a lady in our Serviceman’s branch brought me a newspaper from home and on the front page was a picture of my dad (he was mayor of the city at that time) and he had grown out his hair and wore it combed back. But even more startling was that his hair had turned white. I’ll never forget the strange feelings of seeing that picture of someone I loved very much and who I was intimately related to and yet at the same time suddenly felt like a stranger to me.

In short, with children living all over this world, I love Skype, Internet, and cell phones and am very grateful to the amazing people who invented such things and now maintain them.