I can't find my phone...

I am a person who gets lost even the with the help of a GPS. I can't fold a fitted sheet. I make grocery lists but never remember to bring them to the store. If I meet you at a party, I will forget your name two seconds after we are introduced. Yet despite this manifest lack of competence in many areas of my life, I sometimes stun those around me by performing incredible feats others find impossible.

I had one of these moments recently when my family went on vacation. As we pulled up to the airport in an Uber, a terrible premonition washed over me, and that nagging I-think-I-forgot-something-but-don't-know-what-I-forgot-feeling crept up my spine.

Medication? Contact lenses? Had I left the oven on? Then it hit me.

My phone. 

I ransacked my purse and confirmed my worst fears. We were about to leave on a weeklong vacation, and I'd left my phone at home on the kitchen table.

I shared this news with my family as we stood on the sidewalk outside Reagan National Airport surrounded by luggage as our Uber drove away.

My husband's jaw dropped. "You did what?" 

My seventeen-year-old stared at me, too stunned to speak. My sixteen-year-old shook his head in awe. "I would accidentally leave the house without pants before I'd leave without my phone."

Even my daughter, who does not yet have a phone, looked grave.

"We can go back for it," my husband said quickly. But even without glancing at my non-existent phone to check the time, I knew this was impossible. We were headed to the Caribbean, an international flight requiring us to check our luggage and snorkel gear at an airline desk with a real person. We'd miss our flight if we tried to rescue my phone.

"It's okay," I said, attempting to reassure them. "It's only a week. And you guys are with me."

Grandma was the only family member not currently at the airport who might need me for some reason, and she could reach me by texting my husband or kids. Because of course, they had phones.

My husband still looked shaken. "Are you sure?"

"It's fine," I insisted with a wave of my empty, phoneless hand. And it was fine, more than fine actually, because I secretly hate my phone.

My phone shatters my serenity and contentment. It brings shady calls from telemarketers trying to scam me. It delivers urgent text messages from presidential candidates I do not support who think I'm a man named Joseph.  "Joseph, our country is falling apart, and I need your contribution before midnight tonight so I can save America." 

My phone delivers endless intrusions and buries me under an avalanche of information. Email was bad enough. But now we also have texts and voicemails and Slack and Facebook and Instagram. I get so tired of trying, and failing, to keep up with it all. So I was secretly happy to spend a week without my phone. I felt like a hostage who'd slipped her captors. 

There was a downside of course, not for me, but for my family. If I was on the beach they couldn't call from the hotel room to say, "Mom, do you have the sunscreen? Where are my swim goggles?" They couldn't tell me it was time to meet up at the water park.

I also couldn't take pictures. And I never knew what time it was. I had to stop strangers and use that old line you never hear anymore, "Excuse me, sir, but do you have the time?" People thought I was crazy, but I didn't care. I was free, free at last from my phone.

Instead of reading snippets of articles and news bulletins from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker, I read physical books. While my kids dove into the pool, I dove into stories.

I didn't squander my time scrolling through social media, so I had no idea what I was missing. I stopped feeling like I would be happier if turned my backyard into a second living room by installing a firepit as recommended by Houzz. Or if I bought a new velvet sofa from Serena and Lilly. Or a new dress from J. Crew. The vague ennui of FOMO disappeared as my attention span expanded. I felt focused yet relaxed at the same time. I was content with where I was and who I am. Michael Gerson once said a day without Twitter is like a day without anthrax. He was right. 

But like all good things, my week without a phone came to an end. We returned home and I grabbed my device from the kitchen table where I'd left it. I almost started hyper-ventilating as 8 million unread messages and texts came rushing at me like a pack of wild dogs.

But it was lovely while it lasted, all that white space inside my brain, my thoughts wandering like butterflies through the broad, sunlit uplands of clarity and contentment. I hope I remember to forget my phone when I go on vacation next year, too.

Do you have a love-hate relationship with your phone? And is this generational? Is it because some of us grew up in an era where the phone remained attached to the wall and the world remained tethered to a long, curly cord, unable to follow us into solitude, on vacation, and everywhere else?

Speaking of vacations, the publication date for Friends with Secrets was moved up from September to July because my publisher thinks it's a perfect beach read. 

What's the best escape-from-reality book you've ever read on vacation? Email and let me know at hi@christinegunderson.com and I'll compile a list and release it in the May edition of Love and Laundry as we all prepare to for our various vacation escapes. Because spring is coming, even if we have to squint hard to see it here in the dead heart of winter.

Until then, wishing you a cozy month filled with chocolate, love, healthy households, and a few hours of freedom from your phone.