Indistinct

Cynics and non-believers of “signs” should just stop reading now because I don’t want to know the logical reason behind this. I love getting signs from my mom and they come so rarely that when they do, I just want to keep them as small reminders that she is thinking about me and watching over our family.

I usually keep my ipad on my bedside table but for some reason on Thursday night, I left it downstairs next to my computer.  When I came downstairs, Friday morning, I did my usual routine, breakfast, answering emails, Facebook….and the ipad just sat there idly.  I do all of that on my computer.  I didn’t even look at the ipad until right as I was walking out the door to go to work, and only then because it lit up with a message.

There are always alerts on it, Words With Friends, Facebook messages, texts, but one stood out.  It was from 8:05pm – while I was still downstairs but an alert didn’t come through then. It said I had a “Facetime Call” from Ellie Gianni.  My mom.

I tried swiping the screen to see where the call came from and the message was gone when I went to it.  I put my mom’s name into my contacts and her number came up as my parent’s home phone.  I still have her name in my contacts, but whenever my dad calls me, it comes up as “Mom and Dad.” Never as Ellie.  PLUS, it could not have been a Facetime call from her home phone.

I sent a message to all of my siblings and my dad to see if any of them had been playing around with my mom’s old phone.  My dad has kept it, but it is in a drawer and not charged.  None of them had.  I asked my dad what time he had called me the night before and he told me it was around 9pm.  Still FACETIME??? How did that came up and where did it go?  There is no record of it on my regular iphone either.

My brother told us that on that same night, he had a vivid dream about my mom.  We were all at a restaurant, an old favorite of her’s, and she was telling him something.  He doesn’t know what it was that she was trying to say.

Drew took a screen shot of it.  Just so I could save it.  Still don’t know what mom was trying to tell me, but today’s photo prompt is Indsitinct, which means, not easily seen, heard, or recognized : not distinct or clear. 

Well, this could not be any more indistinct – so even though it is not a great picture, I am using it because it is something I don’t want to forget.

Facetime

If there’s one thing I find myself writing about often, it is family, namely, cousins. My cousins and I are extremely close and although not all of them live near me in New Jersey, we still stay in touch as much as possible. The ones who live in New Jersey we see very often – several times a month I would say. But then there are the ones who live out west, in Nevada and Alaska. Those are the ones we miss the most when we aren’t together. Fortunately with Facebook, I am able to keep in touch with most of them a lot more often than I was ever able to do as a child.

It makes me so happy to see my own children as close to their cousins as I am to mine. Not only tight-knit with their first cousins but to their second cousins and those cousins that are once removed – twice removed – ugh, I never understand how all of that works. I can’t keep it straight. My cousins children! That’s easier!

They have it so much easier than we did as kids though. They use iChat, FaceTime and messaging, Instagram and all sorts of social media to keep in touch. I find it so sweet when I hear one of my boys’ phone ring and it is one of their cousins face timing with them.

This last week has been like a party everyday. One set of cousins, (a different set than was here earlier this summer) is here visiting. The girls are closer to Drew’s age so he, along with my sister’s kids and the cousins who live here in New Jersey have gotten together nearly every night for a week. Today, they spent all day together at the pool. Last night was the same. We are off to dinner together again tonight. All twenty-five of us. Drew wishes it could be a constant sleep over that never ends. I know exactly how he feels because when I was a kid, I wanted that never ending sleep over myself.

The girls are here for another week so there will be plenty more time to get together. We are trying to figure out how we can get out to Nevada to see them before they come out again next summer when we celebrate our grandma’s 100th birthday. Maybe we will get lucky and our Spring Breaks will fall at the same time as theirs does. That would be perfect!!