If You See my Mother, Please Show Her This Picture

Because home keeps moving with every Covid-19 travel restriction.

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I last saw my mother four years ago, in July of 2017. In her house, she hung an outdated calendar with a picture of a lovely young woman. On telling me that she kept the calendar because the girl on it reminded her of me, I threw it out and sent her a canvas print of myself and my family. I did not fancy being replaced by an ad girl in my childhood home.

Now, four years on, my mother says that she is trying to guess what I look like now. Because she does not have a smartphone, I cannot face-time her or share recent photos of myself directly.

‘Just buy her a Smartphone then’, I hear a problem solver say. But my mother can neither read nor write, and the idea of ‘the phone that you scratch’ terrifies her. Why traumatize her over a device for pictures that she may never find? Digital illiteracy and inequalities alienates my mother from my world, and alienates millions more from yours.

Nevertheless, if you see my mother, and can convince her to learn to use a smart device, perhaps set up the apps in pictures associated with their function, you will have succeeded where I failed. You will have bridged the gaps between illiteracy, technology, and the aging. You will have colored…