I may be the last of the breed, but I still believe in calling and receiving calls on my phone. No texting for me, thank you. I know many would rather text.
A couple of years ago I got voice mail through my telephone company. One thing I love about it is being able to save messages for long amounts of time - like a year or more. About once a year I need to renew each message by listening to it and hitting "9" to save.
Yesterday morning Nels woke me at 5 and since I wasn't really ready to get up, I decided to listen to my voice mails and renew them. I have birthday and mother's day greetings from Hans and Heidi, messages from Rachel from Germany and the US. A couple of years ago, Annika left a darling message that went like this: Hi, Gramma. This is Annika. (long pause) Rachel says, "Tell her 'See you soon.'" Well, she doesn't talk. Rachel replies, "Leave a message. Ask her how she is." (long pause). "This is Rachel. Annika just wanted to leave a message. I gave her a brief, but she doesn't understand because you aren't answering her. . . ." I have a thank you call from Josiah saying, "Grandma, thank you for Sir Topham Hatt. Thank you, thank you, thank you!" I love the inflection of his voice. You don't get that with email or texting. One message is from Aurelia, asking me to go out for supper. There are calls from Heidi, with Marshall and Brian in the background. I re-saved all of these precious messages. But then came the big surprise - - I have a voice mail from my Aunt Liz! I have wanted so much to hear her voice again, and now I can! It's not an earth-shaking message, but it is her voice, and I treasure it.
4 comments:
I was just talking to Peder about this. Some people are very self conscious about how they look or how they sound. But they don't realize it is such a gift to be able to see & listen to them just being themselves when we're missing them. I treasure the recording I made of my grandma telling my favorite of the stories from her childhood. I listen to it every once in a while.
I have a long string of texts on my phone from Hans and Gen and I like going back and reading our banter back and forth. I never thought I'd be a texter...I do like talking better than texting. Like Sarah, I have a bunch of mini tapes of family gatherings from years ago. To anyone else, it would be chatter, but I love hearing everyone talking about what was most important to them at the time, hearing our family in the midst of holiday traditions and especially hearing my Grandpa's voice.
The message I miss is our voicemail message from Germany. "Guten Tag, you have reached the De Fors..."
Mom, you can contact the phone company and they'll save those recordings for you. Not sure of the formats or process but give them a call and they'll help you out.
we save voicemails & texts - I agree with Sarah & Rachel - being oneself is GIFT. We have voicemails saved (transferred on to our computer via ITunes) from before Steve's Dad had his stroke. What a blessing it is to be able to hear his voice. Sadly, I find the same thoughts of my mother-in-law Carolyn coming into my head. I save all my voicemails & have many from her (thankfully).
I never thought I'd text either - but dang! It's handy!! My Mom really got into it & texts me daily. :) I look forward to it.
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