My Mom turned 77 this past January and she isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. She is vibrant, strong, independent and quite honestly the nicest person I know, always willing to lend a hand. I am not even sure ‘no’ is in her vocabulary. Family means everything to Mom but unfortunately several of my siblings and I had to move away from Newfoundland for school and eventually work. For Mom, Newfoundland is home. It is not only where much of our family still lives, but where she grew up and was lucky enough to live her entire life. I say ‘lucky’ because Newfoundland never had the bustling economy of some of Canada’s other provinces but for us Newfies it is the best place in the world.
So, with 5 children and 11 grandkids spread out from Newfoundland to Texas, Mom has turned to technology to keep in touch. It started with a home computer and skype about 10 years ago. It was amazing to watch her find her way around technology and how much I learned from observing and supporting her – encouragement too, but more like this:
Mom: How do I use this thing?
Me: What thing?
Mom: This thingamajig in my hand.
Me: A mouse?
Mom: Where? (frantically lifting her feet off the ground)
Downloading and installing software? That was unheard of for Mom back then. Now she talks to her ISP and helps troubleshoot basic issues with them. She has even graduated to a smart phone. It is an ongoing and often frustrating journey but she is getting there!
Yes, technology has evolved to make our lives easier and software simplified to be more intuitive…though there is still a long, long way to go. That is for a future post.
(back to Mom)
The one thing Mom still hasn’t mastered is using Google to search for a particular website. If she is looking for information or an item to buy, Google works fine for her. But trying to find a specific website through search is a challenge. She is certainly not alone. Unless you understand what keywords you need to enter to find it, searching Google can be ineffective and downright frustrating. That is why there are thousands upon thousands of articles about how to use search engines.
Mom loves to quilt. She is amazing at it too. She had made one for each family member and many more for friends. Her designs can be simple or elaborate and everything in between. Before the internet, she relied on patterns at drapery stores. Now she can find ideas and even patterns online. When Mom and her Quilties (that is what I call her quilting friends) get together they chat about everything under the sun, including a little small town gossip. But the topic of quilting always makes its way back into the conversation. They like to share information on it. And when a Quilty talks about a quilting website, the others in the group grab a pen and paper and that Quilty reads the web address off of a piece of paper she had tucked in her overstuffed purse. I chuckled at the idea of writing down a web address…until I analyzed the domains. They were filled with obscure names, words, dashes, slashes and long enough to make you forget what you were doing in the first place.
Mom’s memory is fine and when I said to her “check out my new blog at don.blog”, she knew exactly what to do and it didn’t involve a pen.
P.S. Hi Mom!
Don Ruiz 