I probably use the phrase-“It stopped me in my tracks-” way too much. It is truly an organic reaction to something that really hits me in the chest and yes, stops me in my tracks. I have used it when my brother found our mom’s fudge recipe or when I found a pic of my mom when she was ten years old.
It happened again to me. Something I had not thought about in at least 30 years or more. A friend sent me a pic of a sign up sheet recently of something in high school he had stored away and was going through old things and on that, is that stop me in my tracks moment.
My phone number at the house when I was growing up. He sent me the picture and on there was my name and phone number. Chills.
It is hard for my kids and yours to comprehend, not their fault, how important that house phone was to us growing up and that phone number. Mainly, that was all we had and that is all we knew. Seeing that phone number sent me down a railroad of beautiful and a roller coaster of emotions.
You know how many strange, wonderful, heartfelt, heartbreaking, crushing, amazing, stop in your tracks, heavenly, disappointing, delightful, awful, dreadful, beautiful phone calls that came through on that number? Infinite. An infinite number, no pun intended, of phone calls came through with all of those descriptions.
Mainly, it was my mom’s number. It was the number I called when I got into trouble. It was the number I called to tell her wonderful things that were happening in my life or had just happened. I knew that if I called that number and she answered, no matter what was going on with me or in the world that all would be okay. Moms can only do that.
It was my Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter to the world. We didn’t post back then, obviously, but we called all of our friends to ask if they saw this or that, or what was their opinion on that new video that MTV just played. Any and everything came through that phone and phone number.
We didn’t own a lot of things back then but we had that number. A number that still hits me in the heart as if it is ringing right now. And in some ways, I wish it was. Thankful for friend who find things that think they might have some value and in just about every case, they sure as heck do.
