The Texting Habit That Made Me Closer With My 93-Year-Old Mom

And why you might want to try this too

For a long time my now 93 year old mother didn’t like the idea of texting.

She insisted that meaningful conversation could only happen by talking "tonsil to tonsil.” Her quirky term. Not mine.

"I need to hear your voice," my mother would say, in the same way one might say "I need oxygen to live" or "I need that last piece of cheesecake."

So nobody was more surprised than I was when my mom transformed from textphobic to text aficionado… sending me texts that would make Joan Didion jealous. Perfect grammar. Complex sentence structure. Advanced vocabulary.

For example…

"I just saw a marvelous movie that I am recommending to you!” my mother texted. “It is called Emelia Perez. It has all the bells and whistles of an opera, including some music and the story line is evocative. It is a really original rendering of a movie plot. “

Yep, my 93 year old mom texted ”evocative” and “rendering” in her movie recommendation.

I simply use the word "good" to describe Oscar-winning films. As if I'm rating a grilled cheese sandwich.

And then there was this beautiful text my mom sent about her pride in me.

“You are an ocean, my child! In a good way, of course!” my mom texted. “You have been using your own life as a template for others. How you dealt with the vicissitudes of your life and were able to surmount so many of those difficulties is your PhD!"

I re-read that message several times, struck by her vocabulary ("vicissitudes"), and her insights. Plus, the fact that she'd composed this small masterpiece of maternal pride on a device she once claimed was "destroying proper communication."

Lately, I've become fascinated by this text-only version of my mother.

On the phone, my mother is a conversational wanderer. She moves through topics like someone browsing in a department store.

But her texts reveal a mind that's still sharp, curious, and engaged with the world.

Plus my mom wields a vocabulary that makes mine look like it's been assembled primarily from cereal boxes and bumper stickers.

“You will unfurl the onion as it were and see what is at its core," my mom once texted me.

Plus her texts do more than reveal her precision with language.

They also reveal my mom’s zen-like appreciation for life.

"It looks like a winter wonderland outside!” she once texted. “The walkways are clear so that's a benefit, but it still looks beautiful!"

What also impresses me is how well my 93 year old mom blends SAT level vocabulary with playful slang.

“I'm really glad we had the foresight to change your visit till next week,” she texted. “I’m still sick and I want to be full of piss and vinegar when you're here."

And then there’s my mom’s response to a post I put up on Facebook.

“That is probably a good demographic for your new book,” she texted.

Yes, my 93 year old mom casually analyzed my audience segment. What's next? Texting me SEO strategies?

In person, at age 93, my mother moves through her apartment with careful deliberation.

But her texts reveal a mind that’s still quite quick and limber, exposing aspects of her thinking that tonsil to tonsil conversations often obscure.

Her texts are like digital X-rays, showing the skeleton of her intellect beneath the 93 year old physical exterior.

Proof that clear thinking and elegant expression can endure, even as the body that houses them grows more fragile.

Plus, what I truly never expected from our texting was how it would so greatly transform my relationship with my mother.

"I love you and I want us to be heart to heart! And soul to soul,” my mother texted me one day. “I don't know how else to express it. Maybe that's corny but that's the intimacy I'm looking for with you.”

This from a woman who once told me text messages couldn't convey emotion. From tonsil to tonsil to heart to heart to soul to soul.

Next, my mom texted me her secret desire to have been a therapist.

I never knew about my mom’s alternate dream life before. But thanks to texting, I now do.

"I don't think I ever told you about this other part of me,” my mom texted me one day. “I want you to know before I go on my final journey. Years ago I felt that I would have been a good therapist and found a lot of satisfaction in that role. I never really talked about it but I'm telling you now because that's what you're doing and I feel like it's fulfilling what might've been my destiny."

There it was.

A whole alternative life, revealed in the blue bubble on my screen.

A path not taken. Shared while waiting for her dinner to heat.

I gotta say, there's something almost unbearably tender about seeing my mom’s poignant words appear on my phone, between spam texts about extended car warranties.

Meanwhile, my texts look like they were written by someone who's texting while actively being chased by bees.

Of course, my mom’s texts still sometimes display a more steep technological learning curve.

Once she texted: "I don't know what I just did. I was clicking on stuff. I think I just joined Instagram. I didn't pay for it. Is it something they're going to Bill me for? What is it good for? I never used it."

She also leaves voicemails that make me chuckle.

She’ll start with "Hello, it's your mother."

As if I wouldn't recognize the voice that told me to put on a sweater for approximately 21,872 days of my life.

As if there are just random 93-year-old women calling me all the time.

And yes, my mother still calls as well as texts.

However these days my mother has gotten savvier about arranging our calls.

She now texts to schedule our talks.

"Thursday would be better for me," she texted one week. "Today I'm having some heart test later in the morning. After that, I'm going to have a touchup and a haircut. After that, there is a lecture that I want to attend."

Heart tests, lectures and hair cuts casually bundled together, as if all are equally routine… which, at 93, I suppose they are.

There's something profound in how she refuses to give medical procedures special extra emotional weight in her text to me.

• Heart working? Great.

• Hair looking good? Also important.

• Expanding your mind? Essential.

All parts of a life well-lived.

Later that day I get a text update from my mom:

"The doctor did not seem unduly concerned about any issue Hooray!" my mother texts.

I was not only delighted by the good news, but by how my mother craftily wove “unduly” and “hooray” into the same sentence.

Once when my mom and I were talking tonsil to tonsil, I told her how impressed I was by the vocabulary she uses in her texts.

She laughed and said,"You're only now noticing that your mother is articulate?"

She had a point.

But there was something about seeing her thoughts laid out in text that highlighted her intellectual dexterity in a new way.

Sometimes late at night when I can’t sleep I like to read back through her old text messages.

I find gems like:

• "Did you hear about Ruth Bader Ginsburg?"

• And: "Remember when you were little and wouldn't let me brush your hair?"

• Plus: "Tell my grandson Ari that I’m profoundly impressed with his good grades!!”

I find myself pausing at certain messages, appreciating her unique turn of phrase, her surprising observations.

I confess: I save all of the messages.

And there’s a lot of them.

I don't know exactly how many, because I’m not some weirdo spreadsheet person, so I don't count them.

But it's a lot.

Enough that if you scrolled through our text history, your thumb would get tired and you'd be like, "OMG, how far back does this go?"

I tell myself it's practical to save these texts. I might need to reference something later.

But that's not really it.

The truth is, these messages are becoming a record of her mind, her voice, her perspective…. her particular way of wording things.

I don't tell my mom I save the messages.

That feels either too sentimental or too morbid, depending on how you frame it.

But the truth is simple.

I am collecting pieces of my mom, for a distant time in the future, preserving them in digital amber.

The thing about having a 93-year-old mother is that mortality sits like a third person in all our conversations. Pours coffee. Doesn't speak. But we both know it's there, checking its watch.

And so these texts have become a museum of my mother… evidence of a mind still very much at work in its tenth decade.

They're a record I never would have had in the tonsil to tonsil era.

My father died before texting was common. So I don't have his random Tuesday thoughts, his weather observations, his movie reviews.

But these days technology has changed what we can preserve of each other. What remains.

In the age of digital everything, my mother's texts are creating a new kind of family heirloom.

Not a silver tea set or a piece of jewelry.

But a record of her thoughts, delivered directly to my pocket at all hours of the day and night.

One day the messages will stop. And I'll read back through them looking for something I might have missed, some hidden wisdom.

And I'll wish I'd asked more questions, drawn out more stories, and saved more of her before there was nothing new to save.

But for now, though, my phone continues to ping, with yet another incoming text from her.

And so I stop what I'm doing. I read. I respond.

And then I save.

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Quick Personal Note

Here is a photo of my beautiful, vibrant 93 year old mom.

My vibrant and beautiful 93 year young mom

And…

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