Independent

Independence, tough, four syllable word.  Not easy to forget.  Yet, you can lose it as easily as the proverbial will of the wisp.  I have always prided myself on my independence, and as nature has a way of proving, pride always takes a fall.

My Mother recognized my insecurity early in life, and with absolute determination worked assiduously to insure her eldest daughter’s independence.  She was wise beyond her time, and with her not always gentle insistence, I became independent.

Or so I thought, until this morning.

My life has fallen into a routine these cold winter mornings.  My state of being seems to be insistent on that first strong cup of black coffee accompanied with the low murmur of 1010 on the dial announcing the weather conditions.  However, both the coffee and the radio are accompanied by a companion, my IPad. 

This morning as I sipped the first strong nectar of Green Mountain Extra Bold, I opened the IPad and found a disturbing message.  “Unable to parse, remote server issue. Hit report button.”  I have had an IPad now for at least five years, and this was a new message.  I comprehend what parse means, the rest ???, but I did what I was told (always confident that Apple is smarter than I) and hit report.  A small blue circle started rotating, and rotating and rotating, and I realized what a dilemma I was in.

Independent me wasn’t independent at all anymore.  I had lost that ability to a slim piece of technology weighing less than 2 lbs.  If that silly circle didn’t stop rotating, I wouldn’t have my morning papers.

Worse than that, no email.

And even worse than that, Will could not visit me on Friday night via Facetime.  Michigan doesn't seem so far away when he comes to see me weekly.

I wondered how I ever fell into this relationship with a machine, if that is the correct word for a tablet computer.  I had trusted it with so much of my life.  All my phone numbers were intact under contacts.  I had smugly destroyed my address books.  Not too clever, I now realized.  I had eliminated all the tiresome paper receipts cluttering up my coat pockets and purses, and just recorded all my charge account expenses under the budget icon.  Easier to check monthly than any other system, I once believed.

Birthdays, anniversaries, significant dates had all left my world instantly with “Unable to parse,” whatever that meant.  Even the black coffee didn’t help.  I realized for the first time since I was a very young child, how helpless if feels to be dependent on another, albeit it a thing rather than a human.

I tried to think of the help number for Apple, but of course it was recorded under my contacts, and while I was brewing a second desperately needed cup of coffee from the Keurig, suddenly the blue circle stopped, and world came back into place.  All the familiar icons reappeared, and life was back to normal.  Have I learned a lesson?  Indeed I have, but still I have not quite decided how to remedy it.  Going back to address books, paper receipts, et al, doesn’t appeal to me, but this dependency has to end.  It’s not healthy.  My Mother wouldn’t approve.