The Cerebral Mum

Caspar loving gadgets as he does quite some time ago ate my phone, which involved so my drool that he fried the circuits and I was phoneless for quite some time. That didn’t bother me too much, because I’m somewhat phone-phobic and hate talking on the damn things. I do however, like SMSing. It’s short, to the point, and happens in my own time frame. And useful for things like “Get milk” or ‘Home in 5. Make coffee.” So after a while a long suffering friend, who I don’t talk to enough, posted me an old one of hers. And when I say old, I mean old.

Smessing (That’s what I call it - Spread it around.) on it is a pain it the butt. The screen is microscopic and it takes a dozen button presses just to get to the smess screen and you can’t even set the default to predictive text. But it serves its minimal purposes, and all my numbers and old saved smesses were on my SIM card so nothing was lost. But another thing about it that doesn’t function well is that there is no keypad lock. Left alone in my bag or pocket, it’s free to dial people I haven’t spoken to for years, or people that would barely remember me whose numbers I really should just delete. I can live with that. The amount I use it, a couple of random calls won’t increase my monthly $20 bill.

Today, however, it did something very bad.

It deleted all my saved smesses. Including the few I had kept from Caspar’s dad.

They weren’t really important, I guess, in the scheme of things. There were just a few simple things. A line from one of our favourite songs, a one word message which said, Tulips, and other things in the private language of our short-lived, ill-fated, star-crossed romance. And I know that I don’t need the “evidence” that our relationship was meaningful - because I know it was despite its end - but it made me sad that they were gone. All I have left now of him which is concrete is the worn Ralph Lauren Polo cardigan he loaned to me which never got returned and a letter opener in the shape of Richard the Lionheart’s sword, and the empty envelope from the flowers which arrived after Cas was born; the ones that did not need a card. It isn’t much.

It isn’t like I looked at them every day, or even think of him frequently. He’s there in the background, in my memories - as a good memory - and life moves on. But now I’m feeling a little tristesse. Perhaps I’m sentimental but I guess that that is a far better thing for a single Mum to be than angry or hurt or bitter. Well… I might be a little angry.

At that damn phone.

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