parents should be heard and not seen

My Dad rang yesterday. And he has obviously just discovered the video calling option on the Signal app.

It caught me out at first as it is the first time he's ever used that option. I try not to use it much myself either really. To my kids it's second nature. Call Dad (me) do it on video.

Am I being old-fashioned calling it a 'video call'? Do people say 'a Facetime' now, like Google became the word for search? I don't know.

Anyway, being Dad, he's obviously got the phone on his lap, so my view of him is 80% their conservatory ceiling, a bright view over the garden through the window behind him, and a small, dark, Dad-shaped lump in the lowest quarter of the screen.

I start by advising him about some framing changes.

My parents are getting towards hitting 80 now. Dad's not long out of hospital after a bout of sepsis, but he's always been pretty fit and even now, a few months from his 80th birthday and just weeks after being in an intensive care unit, looks well.

"How nice to see you," he says.

"I can't see him," comes another voice. My Mum. Immediate motion sickness-inducing lurch of the camera as it's panned around to show my Mum who, I note by contrast, is looking at least eighty, even if she's a couple of years off that age yet.

She switches into passive-aggressive mode. She can't help it.
"Oh, that's what you look like now. Do you know how long it's been since we've actually seen you?"

– Sigh.. no Mum

"A year and a half," she says, "your cousin's wedding."

– Oh, really? To be fair, that was the last time most of the Devon branch of the family has seen me as well.

"Yes, but we're your parents. You might have popped in since. What is it, an hour's drive?"

– Hour and a half, Mum. Three hours there and back.

This is going to be a long call.

Video calling parents. It's not right.

Before when either of them voice called, I could just whack the speaker phone on beside me on the desk and carry on working on the computer (or more likely procrastinating) while occasionally grunting to acknowledge what was being said. I could roll my eyes at the casual racism and bigotry, slap my forehead and look, I'm sure, as pained and in despair about it as I felt, biting my tongue.

We've had the conversation about that stuff before. We've sort of agreed to keep our opposing views on what they call 'woke' out of it, for the sake of 'family', 'grandkids', and 'getting on', since the time I hung up on them and didn't speak to them for four months. But it's hard.

And it's even harder if they're going to start video calling now. Now they can see me, I have to concentrate on being visually nice to them as well.

Even though we've had the conversation, and promised to try to find a way through, to keep communication channels open, it is so ingrained in them at their age that the little "of course, I couldn't understand him, he wasn't English" when describing a doctor visit, is still dropped in and passed over by them without thinking.

Or perhaps it shouldn't be? Perhaps I should carry on grimacing, raising my eyebrows, frowning and forehead slapping while they can see it, so they can now see how painful it is.

And they should see the 'lost interest now' look as well (that doesn't take long), because sorry Dad, I can NOT listen to how long it took you to find a parking space at the hospital (in what must be almost real time) without getting a bit distracted by a bit of dust on my screen. Maybe he'll get that hint? (He didn't get that hint)

Luckily on this occasion I was saved by the extra power cost of making a video call over a voice call. A low battery warning had apparently appeared on Dad's phone.

Phew. After only half an hour too.

My kids however use video calls all the time. So much so that I had to cut my son off from his last call to me – which he initiated – as, although the phone was secured on a holder, it was apparent he was driving up the M5 at the time.

He thought that would be fine, hands free, see? Nah, I was a sales rep so I know concentrating on driving while even just talking and thinking about another subject is not a suitable 70mph busy motorway multi-task.

But it is lovely when I get to see their faces in normal circumstances, especially when I don't otherwise physically see them a lot.

Of course, there is some hypocrisy here. I'm a parent, enjoying video calls with my kids, but not enjoying video calls with my parents as their kid.

Yeah, sorry about that. Wouldn't it be nice if the world made sense all the time?