I made a personal commitment to do a better job keeping in touch with my family after my medical challenges over the Christmas season. The results of this effort have, in general terms, been a bit of a mixed bag.
Who’s on first?
A big obstacle for staying in touch by phone has always been who called last. Like it is some kind of effort sharing work, with no one wanting to do their task before its time.
I overcame most of this by simply not caring. I call when the week or two weeks span between calls comes up, and if I call a bit too early or too much, well who cares? Apparently my family cares, or at least some members do.
I have been given some indication that my calling ‘out of turn’ is causing some consternation. “Oh no- I’m the only one making phone calls! What a tragedy!!” A pretty funny thing to be worried about, but there you go.
I’m going to continue to do my best not to care about this very much. Staying in contact is more important than when or who called last. We don’t get “points”, or lose them, for calling first. It is really kind of silly to think that it matters, although I get that it does for some folks.
Time and time zones
When is a convenient time for me to call you? Well, that seems to be a hard question to answer. I have spent most of my time and effort on this one. I text first, try to pre-schedule a week or so in advance, aim to work around preferences. Heck, I even resorted to using an automated calendaring system with booked appointments.
But at some point this all becomes problematic. If everyone in the family wants a call between 10:00 am and noon on Sundays, that isn’t really going to work. Well, certainly not with the longer calls my family, myself included, seems to prefer. And so I try to spread things around a bit.
Two of my siblings are legitimately retired, one is semi-retired, and the last works full time during school seasons. Lots of free time, right? Wrong: every call is fraught with challenges around habitual working/shopping/hobby times. I am still working hard on this one.
Not giving up
I am probably taking the challenge a bit too seriously. Really, who cares if I miss a few calls?
I shouldn’t care, but I still do. I want to keep the contact fairly regular in large part because it is so easy to stop. To be comfortable with one call every six months, or maybe every couple of years. And then one day you realize you don’t remember when that last call was.
So I’ll keep trying. Many thanks to my brothers and sister for their patience!
