Dear Scarlette,
I was twelve years old the first time I used the internet. Our family had just gotten it’s first computer and we plugged it into our telephone line and dialed up to AOL. You’re probably wondering what that even means, so you’ll have to visit Aunt Tiffani and ask her to watch You’ve Got Mail with you. I’d show it to you myself except for that I kind of hate that movie, probably because Aunt Tiff had it on repeat when we lived together in college. (In her defense, I’m the reason she hates The Princess Diaries. )
When my high school sweetheart went off to another state, there was no texting because there was no texting; it was non-existant. Instead, we waited for parental permission to tie up the phone lines and instant-message one another. Or else we paged each other with lines of numbers on a beeper screen that we would have to later decode using a touch-tone keypad. And we wrote letters on paper, by hand, stamped and dropped in a mailbox that we would visit frequently in anticipation of a much-awaited reply.
They don’t teach cursive writing in school anymore because little fingers tap out strokes on a keyboard more than they curl around a pencil. You will learn to make broad loops on the tails of your L’s because your mother reads too much dystopian fiction and one day when you read The Giver you will discover why I find it so important to preserve parts of the past that are phased out from one generation to the next.
The other day I read a story about a mom who bought her son an iPhone. She made him sign a contract to use it (no, you can’t have an iPhone yet) and this part is what struck me “Turn it off, silence it, put it away in public. Especially in a restaurant, at the movies, or while speaking with another human being. You are not a rude person; do not allow the iPhone to change that.”
Your father and I went to a basketball game, not a big NBA sort of deal but a local youth league that a friend of ours coaches. We didn’t have a child playing but the people sitting around us in the bleachers did, each and every set of parents tapping away at their smart phones as their children passed the ball down the court and swished it through the net. I bit my lip until we were buckled in the car, spilling out my frustration before your father could exit the parking lot.
And truthfully the strength of my feelings may hold some self-righteous judgement. But I do know it cemented for me an example I want to set for you and that is to be present. Watch the game. Talk to the people sharing your bench. Take part in the world that is happening around you rather than shutting it out in favor of a virtual presence. There is great value in the community that lives online but don’t forget that there is community in grocery stores and lines at the post office and walks at the park.
You glide a gluestick over paper while I scrapbook, my hobby in documentation, and you watch as I write these words and paste in pictures that I’ve snapped from behind a lens. This is good, this preservation of time, but don’t capture memories in exchange for making them. Live first and #latergram, well, later.
For Christmas your father got me a Kindle Fire (see, I’m not totally anti-technology, says the girl who writes a blog on the internet for a living) We discovered it had a special section for you, where your board books come to life and you can watch as Moo Baa La La La actually moos and baas and la la las. It only took one read through for you to figure out how to slide your fingers across the touch screen to turn virtual pages or to tap certain sections and make the animated sun spin in the sky.
You are two years old and this is the world that you will grow up in, with my little girl visions of futuristic technology literally at your little girl fingertips and a command over it that is sure to surpass your parents.
I don’t want you to fear technology, not when I watched intricate machines hum next to your isolette, one taking your breaths and one recording the beat of your heart and seven others stacked atop one another feeding medication into your tiny veins that all together would work to save your life, granting me this gift of mothering you on this earth. I am grateful for skilled surgeons and wise doctors, for the prayers of facebook friends and technological advancements in medicine.
There are many perks to this age of virtual connectivity. There is beautiful community here as well as the answers to why my strawberry bush isn’t blooming (without even having to use the Dewey Decimal system.) There is your aunt on a video-call that we can see, giving us a tour of her home on different coast and watching you grow up long distance through the magic of Skype. Technology isn’t bad, Scarlette.
My hope for you though, is that your hands will hold a book more often than a tablet. That I’ll find your face streaked with dirt more frequently than the glow from a screen. That in an age of palm-sized computers you know that technology is a wonderful tool in life but not the key to it.
And that you play tic-tac-toe with sidewalk chalk in the middle of the driveway, even though there is an app for that.
