Nana's Reformation

I was a kid who read the cereal box while eating my cereal. From the lightning strike split- second I got how reading works, I have compulsively devoured content.

I am now an adult with the same addiction in the age of smartphones. My trusty iPhone 10 alternately informs, entertains, connects, and enthralls me. Every notification feels urgent.   

Then, this past weekend, I was in North Carolina, holding my two-and-a -half-year-old grandson Henry in my arms and my phone in my hand when I heard that familiar ding. Automatically I opened the screen and started reading. Henry watched me get sucked out of this world and into a trance-like absorption with CNN breaking news, and he leaned his little body forward and peered into my face. “Nana?” he said, understandably concerned. I mean, he’d watched my transformation from his doting grandmother into a slack-jawed word zombie.

I’m not telling you how to behave with your phones, but I can tell you that for me, to realize that my behavior signaled to one of my dearest, most impressionable beloveds that a hand-held device came first, this nana knew it was time to put down the fucking phone.

Which I did, of course, and I’d like to tell life the same thing I told Henry.  “I’m so sorry. From now on, I’m all yours.”