Back in the middle of the last century when I was a kid and TV watching was limited to only three channels and all programming was in black and white, my favorite cartoon show was The Jetsons.
The Jetsons lived what at that time seemed like the far-off future where technology had advanced to a level beyond our wildest beliefs. It didn’t seem possible that we would ever see such wonders in our own lifetimes.
George Jetson drove a flying car, his wife Jane cooked foods almost instantly in a small oven and daughter Judy chatted with her girlfriends on a phone with a television screen where she could see the person she was talking to. Uncroyable! The plots of each episode were pretty routine, but the furnishings were amazing! In fact, The Jetsons holds such a special place in my heart that I’ve been using the sound of their doorbell as the ringtone on my phone for more than ten years.
So much of what George Jetson used has become a part of our lives today. We cook meals in minutes in our microwave ovens, we use long stretches of moving sidewalks when we move from place to place in airports (if we ever fly again) but best of all, we are now able to see each other while chatting via a number of applications; FaceTime, Skype, Zoom and Microsoft Teams to name a few.
I’ve been using FaceTime pretty regularly for quite a while. For the past nine years, since moving away from Virginia Beach, I’ve had standing FaceTime calls with my BFF Vanya every Monday and Friday mornings as she gets ready for work. This chat time has been vital in keeping us connected because of the added feature of being able to show each other stuff like what we found on a recent shopping trip, flowers we received from our husbands or just a pretty view from our window.
I also do Saturday morning chats with my daughter, Maggie. Initially these chats were to keep a close connection with her son, Kaspar, as he grew so that he could get to know his Yaya and Grandpa even though we didn’t live nearby. But, now that he’s all of four, he’s not always as receptive to chatting with me on Saturdays. Yet other times, he will have his mother call me just to share something he’s built with his blocks. The seeing is so important – especially now.
Two months ago, I had never even heard of Zoom and today it has become another important lifeline. Even though the free version limits us to forty minutes of screen time, it seems to work a little better with less bandwidth, which is important when you live in a rural area and not everybody has a good high speed internet connection.
Dave and I share a regular Zoom “cocktail” hour with friends a couple time a week where we catch up on how the others are faring in captivity. I “attend” a Friday night Zoom Prayer, Meditation and Song (PMS) program which connects me to my Cursillo community and friends that I have missed so much these past months. I have added a weekly meeting with my small Cursillo prayer group as well. I still use FaceTime for smaller family groups, or when I don’t want to be cut off after 40 minutes. Either way, every bit of face-to-face contact is so important, making the life of a hermit so much more bearable. It also gives me a reason to fix my ever lengthening locks and put on a little makeup, which makes me feel better about myself, which is also a good thing.
I’m starting to view 2020 as a “gap year”. It doesn’t appear as though anything is going to happen anytime soon to halt this disease in its tracks, allowing us to move about in public as we have in the past. So many of the plans we had made for this year have been pushed forward into the future. In the meantime, I’ll continue to Zoom and FaceTime as much as I can to keep my loved ones as close as I can and be so very grateful to have the ability to see them in real time.