Picture this: a beaming, triumphant nine-year-old straddles the blanched, decaying carcass of a gargantuan, prehistoric organism. She smiles and waves from the perch she’s clambered to twelve feet above the forest floor. It’s perfect; it’s memorable; it’s eminently share-able. I reach for my phone to take a picture.
It’s not in my pocket. Not in my backpack. My last memory of it is taking it out of my pocket to set it on top of the toilet paper dispenser in the (very) public restroom in the parking lot at the Tuolemne Grove trailhead in Yosemite National Park, an hour’s (very) uphill hike from my present position at the foot of a jaw-dropping toppled Giant Sequoia.
My first reaction? But my Insta! My Facebook! How will I remember this moment? It won’t be real (not really)!
My second reaction? How did I become that person? I have vehemently ranted against tech culture (e.g. “Slow the Fuck Down“) and its capacity to distance us from the warp and woof of our own lived experience. I’ve decried the shallowness and posturing of social media representations. But man, did failing to document a private moment in a public forum sure hit me in the tender parts.
Suddenly I was Janet Jackson at Superbowl XXXVIII. Wardrobe. Malfunction. Boy, did I feel naked. All those pictures from the first few days of our camping trip that I planned to post to Insta, all the messages I was missing, my contact list, Google Maps for navigating halfway across the country in typical over-determined-Janna-planning-style, oh yeah, and my bank account information, and who knows what other information security breadcrumbs I’d left laying about like a severed limb that was now giving me major phantom pains.
I took a deep breath. The only way back to the bathroom and (please, please, please still be there) my phone was on and up, so I tried to dredge up the appropriate marvel and awe for the rest of the scenic loop and silence the phantom shutter click of all the photo ops I was missing. Once past the grove of giants, I hoofed it back to the parking lot. Where I found…
No phone.
No phone!
No phone! No phone! No phone!
Yeah. The following hours have been redacted for unseemly content. It included an obscene number of phone calls to the Park Service Lost and Found office from my daughter’s phone running on 3G, when it could, from the valley floor, in lieu of taking in Half Dome or Bridal Veil Falls.
A day passed. We continued on our journey west, to the coast. I mourned. And railed. Why hadn’t the stupid park service called me back?
Another day. I obsessively borrowed the husband’s and daughter’s phones to check for updates.
Sound familiar? Classic withdrawal symptoms. I hadn’t even realized just how addicted I’d become.
Another day. I went to the beach. I pressed the mind-shutter watching my kids play in the surf and learn to boogie board on the same beach I’d learned on growing up. There were wipeouts and fish tacos and wrastling with the uncle. I checked for messages in the morning and night.
There were back-to-school shopping and ice cream pie and old friends.
I almost bought a new phone, but I didn’t. I mean, my phone was still out there, right? I could live without it for one more day.
There may have been a teeny tiny incident with a busted side view mirror that I may or may not have blown a teeny tiny bit out of proportion.
The kids played with toys (Majorette anyone? Anyone?) and dolls that I’d played with fondly in my early years (and even my mother before me). There were connections across generations.
There were more trips to the beach, and a museum, and a pilgrimage to the temple of pepto-pink kitsch, the peerless Madonna Inn.
There are no pictures of any of these. But I am not in danger of forgetting. Neither was this trip for the public. It was for my family. A few ups, a few downs. One particularly harrowing Arizona night caught in a flash flood on the highway.
One day became two, became ten, has become, gee, I don’t know. I’m not obsessively checking my Google Calendar. Or my texts. Or Facebook. Or my email. My hands are free. To write. To make. To do.
Life in the Multiverse 