1987

It's an autumn evening in 1987. The moon casts light, and creates shadows, on the small, shotgun-style home nestled under pine trees, and adjacent to a small brook. It is cool, and quiet, outside but inside the walls of the tiny building, it is hot from the wood stove and the number of people gathered around the kitchen table. Cigarette smoke swirls around the room and coffee flows in cups with slight chips around the rim. Conversations cross the room, voices speaking over and under one another. Proximity does not dictate those in dialogue but instead, topics of discussion. A man in the far corner semi-shouts to a woman in the other corner about a baby being freed from a well. The matriarch, rocking in a chair away from the others at the table, shuts down all of the chatter to announce that, despite the critics, she likes Ollie North.

The conversation continues like this for at least an hour, if not more. This is a home that has been a safe place, a home of warmth, for a dozen, if not more, over the course of the past decades. Every morning, a cast of characters gather to start the day with coffee and a donut, to then go about their days of work to again return to close out the day with conversation, before returning home for a night's rest. Neighborhood children catch the bus here daily and each evening, at least one of them returns, playing outside until dusk in the summer, or mingling quietly among the adults in the winter. It is a lively place. It is a place of constant movement and conversation. It is home to debates and arguments, swearing,coffee and beer, tobacco and cigarettes. Outsiders are overwhelmed by the multitude of the concurrent conversations and the profanity, and have no idea who is related and who is not, and the matriarch is referred to as Ma by all. She shouts the loudest, swears the most, and is beloved.

I am the child. I am the one who cartwheeels on the lawn in the summer and colors in her My Little Pony coloring book as the snow comes down in the winter evenings. I grew up in the happy chaos of a big family, surrounded by aunts and uncles, cousins and people who seemed like aunts and uncles and cousins, and may as well have been, but weren't. I was the tiny shadow of my mother and in her absence, I could be found by my grandmother's side- the matriarch.

I am used to noise and being around people all of the time. I find it comforting and safe. I don't think that I was alone until I was about 13 or 14 and even by then, I was nearly inseparable from my best friend, her parents and her two sisters. I was a social butterfly in high school and, despite some annoyances, found myself perfectly content with communal living in college.

My post graduate experiences followed suit: I lived in an historic house with a group of students during a summer fellowship program to then, a year later, become intimately acquainted with two dozen or so students at a small graduate program. Besides my time researching in archives or drafting papers in my library carrel, I always had someone to share a meal with, walk with, sing karaoke at the bar with, or to join me in watching the MTV Video Music Awards.

When we all graduated, they left and I stayed. I lost my built-in social network and my childhood shotgun house, which was hours away had, by now, lost it's matriarch. Without a strong social network or an actual or constructed family, for the first time in my life, I felt very lonely.

For those of you who know my life's journey, you may be wondering why I am talking about loneliness at this point in my story. I lived with Andy after graduate school. We were engaged, we'd bought a home and had a wedding date set. I had a job. It wasn't until all of my classmates left, and it was just me and Andy, that I realized that Andy is introverted, very private and a workaholic. As Andy made a name for himself in our community, I often found myself home alone. I missed my mom and called her weekly, wishing desperately to live closer so we could go grocery shopping together on Sundays, and have coffee with my aunts and cousins. In a strange twist of fate, a dog that I had not wanted, and felt coerced into caring for, became my best furfriend and home companion, riding with me around town, patiently waiting for me in the car while I popped into the grocery store or Target. She listened to all of my stories and kept me company on dark, snowy nights when Andy was still at work. In a time before the internet, chat rooms and social media, my loyal dog, Dingo, helped me figure out how to be comfortable with the quiet.

Of course, the quiet was short lived. Having children, and more pets, and a full-time job has left me with little solitude. For years, for the first time, I was desperate to be left alone,even for a few minutes. For someone who loves chatter and physical contact (I'm a big hugger), having toddlers made me loathe being touched and cluttered my brain with being talked at. For several Mother's Days, my gift was a day of being all alone for a few hours, even if that meant taking a walk and going to the hardware store to look at planters. Feeling lonely felt like a long lost memory, the tiniest blip between my childhood and parenthood.

Until recently. Andy has continued to be his introverted, workaholic self. Before I can even get in a hello, when he returns home from a 12-hour day of extroverting, he disappears into the bathroom to recharge, surrounded by the comforts of the toilet and tub, with the all important locked door between him and the family awaiting him.

Until recently. My previously needy, stuck-to-me, kids have now turned into brooding, moody preteens who have their own ipads. Their need for me, and my attention, has been replaced by "a magical and revolutionary" screen that connects them to a world that is much more entertaining than good old mom. Even with time restrictions placed on screen time, the time between uses has become painful. I am the recipient of hateful comments and incessant whining.

I look around lately and I find that I am sitting in a room full of people with their heads down, completely silent, rapt, engulfed in a virtual not-so-real, reality. I'm desperate to connect with my family. I ask if they want to go for a hike, or swimming, a bike ride or to play a board game. I request a "screen free night with Andy, or even dare suggest a "screen free weekend".

I am told no and that's when I am met with the courtesy of an answer. Or, maybe a happy medium is a mumble I hear, but I can't read from their lips, because the screen is held in front of their face.

The feeling was small, but hovering around the outskirts of my thoughts at the beginning of the summer and by summer's close, and hundreds of hours of summer lost to screens, the feeling has settled into my heart like fog nestles into the mountains on a cool morning. It blocks the sunshine and masks the crisp blue skies.

I'm lonely. I want to scream and yell and I often do. I'm angry and I feel out of control because I let this happen. It is all my fault. Lifting the fog feels insurmountable. In a boxing match between me and Apple, I'm left as the loser, my fate a TKO.

I miss that little house by the brook. I miss rushing inside in the late summer, barefoot and freezing because I stayed out after the sun set, when the the temperature dips fast. I miss being met by my tea cup sitting on the table, filled with 2 sugar cubes, hot water and my chamomile tea. I miss all of the people shouting and laughing, looking one another in the eye, having nothing to distract them other than the need for another cup of coffee or bedtime calling. I miss quietly being included in the moment because, at that moment, I felt connected. I felt rooted to my people, in that place at that time. I knew nothing other than what and who was within those walls.

I'm not anti-technology. I think that, for many who did not have the comforts of my upbringing, the connections made virtually are actually life saving. For some, they are lonely when surrounded by their family and find connection virtually, which enables them to move beyond the walls that confine them. There is an important place for the internet, when it is used wisely and in moderation.

Like the days of my early adulthood, I have returned to a place of loneliness, a need to reconnect. I hope that will happen with my family. CAn I be the one to lift the fog and re-engage them in the magic that is family and outside play and making your own stories in your mind and in your heart, not passively witnessing someone else's on a screen? Maybe I can at least get Andy to text me a, "Hey! How was your day?" from the bathroom. Or maybe I should take our dog, Otis, on more outings.

It is time. I have to go now. My family has their faces glued to their screens.

But it's Sunday night and my mom is calling me.

She still doesn't own an ipad.