In Praise of the Kitchen Phone
Family life without cell phones
I wish my kids had a kitchen phone.
Our singular household phone would hang proudly on the wall, just across from the sink. My kids would spend weeknights watching me tangle and twist that kitchen phone’s curling cord between my fingers as I shooed them away from my chat with Grandma, stretching its limits as I reached over to stir dinner on the stove.
When our kitchen phone rang during dinner, we’d all give each other ‘the look’, the one that says no one answers the phone during dinner. It would ring six times as we passed the garlic bread; we’d let the answering machine pick it up while we twirled spaghetti around our forks. “Hi! You’ve reached Heather! And Jesse! And Carter! And Jack! And Us, The Twins! We can’t come to the phone right now, so leave a message at the beeeeep.”
If our kitchen phone rang during my favorite show, on Wednesday nights from seven-to-eight, I’d tell my 11-year old to “tell ’em I’ll call them during commercial”. There’d be a little pad of paper next to it to jot a message, and even my five-year old would know how to tell someone, “Mom’s busy right now.”
And, that’s true, Mom is really busy, because life is busy. But not so busy that she can’t find two hours on a weekday morning to sit cross-legged on the…
