Little Talks and Ethernets

Every week at this time I have a little talk with myself. “That blog isn’t going to write itself, you know?” I ask. Blogs don’t write themselves any more than novels, memoirs, or short stories do. As a mom raising girls I was famous for having “little talks.” In an effort not to embarrass them or myself, I’d pull them aside or wait for an opportune time to “have our little talk.” We seemed to settle everything this way. Now I have no one to pull over but myself, and apparently this has to happen repeatedly. Especially with one of the activities I most enjoy, which is writing.

Blogging holds my feet to the fire in a way I haven’t known since grad school. My daughter set up my blog for me. She was twenty-six at the time and while I was still hemming and hawing about whether or not I even wanted a blog, she set it all up on WordPress. Seeing it, I could title it. But she got me rolling. Her recommendation was that blogging be weekly, at a minimum. “You will lose all your readers, mom, if you do not post consistently.” It must have been pounded into me. That was last Thanksgiving, twenty-nine posts ago, and I haven’t missed a beat. Still, what she can’t see is that I go through this insane ritual every week like a high-wire act, trying to dodge out of it. In the meantime, it’s good practice….

One foot in this world, one foot in the old, that’s the precarious balance of our time—unless one is young enough, or nerdy enough, to be at home in the ethernets. I am reminded of a story of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation to the throne in 1952, following the death of her father, King George VI. Elizabeth too was twenty-six years old. This would be the first coronation ceremony since the advent of television and BBC would be broadcasting it live. Millions of British citizens were expected to huddle around television sets, many for the first time, and one of the overriding national concerns was: How are we going to know if the ladies aren’t wearing their hats?

That’s kind of where we are today, between worlds. Oh, the things that work for my daughters that weren’t in place for us. They have no idea. We were moving about and marrying and changing our names at their age, and all too easily losing track of one another. But with today’s technology and social networks, the twenty-somethings are part of an ever-growing community they carry with them from school to school, job to job, city to city, one name to the next. They and their friends and acquaintances are like satellites positioned and moving around the world at all times, and I am in awe, really.

Now, if I could just pry my heel out of this net….