Grandmother's Phone

My grandmother is seventy-eight, and last month my uncle bought her a smartphone. Everyone laughed. She'd never used a computer. She thought the internet was something inside the TV. We expected the phone to stay in a drawer.

For the first week, it did. Then my cousin showed her how to make video calls. Now she calls everyone. She calls me at work. She calls my mother during dinner. She calls my uncle in Malaysia at six in the morning, his time, because she forgets about time zones.

Yesterday she sent me a photo of her garden with a message: "Look, the chilies are red. Come and take some." There were fourteen emojis. We laughed at her for a week. Now she's the most connected person in the family. She says she was just waiting for us to give her the tools.