Fielding Calls

Whenever my cell phone rings, there’s a 97 percent chance my mother is on the other end of the line.

It’s gotten so bad that most people who live with me, eat with me or ride the shuttle with me know that I’m the first, last and only person on her speed dial. To fully understand the nature of the special relationship my mom and I share, allow me to expound on a day in the life of our Verizon plan.

8:45 a.m. Call number one: “Mom, it’s too early.”

I have class at 10 a.m. Therefore, Mom thinks that it’s perfectly logical to engage in a nice chat at an hour when I can barely open my eyes, let alone ponder my estimated time of arrival at Penn Station when I go home for Thanksgiving, four weeks from now.

But my mom is not one to let any moment go to waste. When she was 38 years old, she wanted to have a baby. The time was right; the hormones were ready. One small catch—she wasn’t in love with anyone. And who would marry someone they didn’t love? At the time, adoption agencies were wary of entrusting a child to a self-employed single parent with a modest income. And thus I was born, twenty years ago, by artificial insemination.

Contrary to popular belief, Mom didn’t look at a list of donors and say, “Oh, yes, light brown hair, smart mouth, Yankee fan...that one’s for me!” The insemination procedure was performed through a hospital with the sperm of an anonymous donor. Neither Mom nor I know anything about him.

All I knew was that while I was growing up, my world revolved around Mom. My family is small, but it’s sturdy. And while I’m barely 300 miles away from our New York apartment, thanks to the world of wireless technology, her world can still revolve around me.

10:33 a.m. Call number two: “Mom, I’m in class.”

Despite the fact that I e-mailed Mom a detailed description of my class schedule—with times included—she still manages to call right in the middle of my geology class. During the slide on carbon dating, I duck out to take the call.

“What do you want?”

“Hana honey, I just wanted to tell you that I bought the best corn at Fairway today.”

“Moooooom. You called for that?”

“But it’s your favorite vegetable.”

I’ve asked her to e-mail me when she needs to tell me something on the spot. But that results in her writing the entirety of the e-mail in the subject line. All ten sentences. Technology’s not really her thing. She went without a working VCR for months until I came home and matched the red cord with the red plug.

But she called another time, brimming with excitement, to tell me that she had just unscrewed the back of Grandma’s computer and rearranged a cable or two—and now it was up and running again. She said the Dell technician gave wonderful instructions, and wasn’t I proud of her?

She’s the type of mom who stays up late engrossed by black-and-white films on the Turner Classic Movies channel. She listens to Broadway musical soundtracks nonstop (admittedly, I do too) and when I turn up the Top 40 radio station in the car to dance to Usher in my seat, she shakes her head and asks how I can listen to such nonsense. It gives her a headache.

So we turn the music back to Annie Get Your Gun, the Ethel Merman original score—of course—and belt out the words to “You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun.”

1:17 p.m. Call number three: “Mom, my mouth is full.”

I’m trying to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a Congo bar, but Mom’s calling to ask if I remembered to call Grandma this week. She hears me chew, asks what I’m eating and admonishes me for an unbalanced diet.

“When you’re at home, bird, I cook for you right,” she coos. “Your momma loves you.”

Yes, Mom sometimes calls me bird. It’s endearing, I swear. And she’s not lying; we do eat well. Nothing can top her chicken on skewers or her stir-fry. She sends my suite cookies every other week, because when she’s not worried about us eating unhealthily, she’s worried about us eating at all.

Even though she’s deathly allergic to shellfish, she encouraged me to eat all the lobster I wanted when we were taking a mother-daughter vacation to Maine this past August. On that trip, I convinced her to take a sea-kayaking trip with me. She was anxious about capsizing, getting lost and being pulled out to sea by the riptide. But she swallowed her fears and got in the boat. Now she brags to everyone in sight about her adventure.

11:54 p.m. Call number four: “Mom, I’m in the middle of a game of Bei—solitaire.”

I really cannot fathom that my mother thinks I’ll be able to carry on a coherent conversation at midnight on a Friday night.

But she knows I’ll be awake, because she has taught me to stay up late and sleep in. When I was in middle school, she’d make s’mores in the oven at 2 a.m., and we’d sit in our pajamas around the kitchen table and leaf through the New York Times, reading aloud the choicest sentences to each other. And though she’s never coached my ping-pong ball throwing skills, she’s always told me to stop working and relax.

3:21 a.m. Call number five: “Hana, phone home.”

This time, however, the direction of dialing has reversed. This time, I’m calling Mom because I’m freaking out about a paper due in six hours. This time, I’m the one who impulsively picks up the phone because I need to hear her tell me, right then, that everything’s going to be all right.

“I’ve known you for 20 years, baby,” she says. “I know you better than you know yourself. You can do this.”

And so I do. I hand in that damn paper early, and call my mom on the way back to Mather to take a nap.

“I knew you could do it,” she says. “Now sleep well.”

Some friends ask why I answer my phone if I know Mom is calling—especially since I complain so much about the incessant communication. The truth is, I can’t. not answer. I can’t freeze her out of my life because she’s too much a part of it.

When she took me to Yankee games in high school, she brought her paperwork. She’d squint at the field and ask where Derek Jeter was. I’d point, she’d holler out a “Let’s go, Jeter!” and return to her work. I don’t think she could even tell you what position he played, but she knew he was my favorite. Love is about making sacrifices for people you care about.

All I have to do is answer the phone. And, sometimes, I have to pick it up myself.Hana R. Alberts ’06 is a news editor. However much she may whine when the caller ID flashes “Mom cell,” she loves her Momma more than life itself. To Yorkville, family vacations and the best memories. She is where she is because of you. Happy Birthday, Mom.