Thursday, August 27, 2009

2/3 Full Inbox


by
Patti Dickinson

Kathleen, my newly-graduated daughter, is living in Chicago, working at The Vitalist Theatre. She has an internship that runs through October. She is the assistant-stage manager on "The Night Season", working fourteen hour days. Not even a text message in the last ten days.

Andrew, a college freshman, has been at The University of Nebraska for a week today. He's sent nothing but text messages. What I know: he loves his classes. His roommate drinks Pepsi all day long. He has 72 of 100 pages read for a paper he has to write for his political science class. That's about it. Maybe it's the male/female thing. Women want details. I want to know what he and his roommate talked about as this kid is guzzling the liquid nourishment. I want to know what he had for lunch and how it tasted. I want to know what the kid is like that he played tennis with --- where he's from, what brought him to UNL, if he has a girlfriend....

Mary Morgan is in Denver. Junior year nursing student. Big talker. She calls. Sometimes an email. Rarely a text. Her stories are almost explosive. I can picture her, walking to class, talking to me, waving her arms around, stopping on the sidewalk to get a point across that requires all of her be focused on the telling. She called with details about her nursing classes. She learned how to put on gloves without compromising sterility, and how to restrain a patient. (Hmmm...wonder if that will come in handy one day when she has to restrain some Kindergartner for their school shots....just about one of a handful of times that my husband took one of the kids to the pediatrician and he came home from his trip with five year old Mary, with his hair standing on end, with a report that no fewer than three nurses had to hold her down....now obviously none of those nurses's strong suit was patient restraint!!!)

Same mom and dad. Such different communication styles. But last night I wrote an email and in the subject line was "Mary wins the Gold Award". That got them going. Told them that Mary won, Andrew came in second and Kathleen was bringing up the rear. So you think sibling rivalry is only for the single digit years? Ohhhhh no. These kids are 23, 20 and 18.

But I got two emails out of the deal. In my in-box, first thing this morning!


No comments: