48 Hours Locked Out of My Phone and This Surprising Thing Happened

New Moon, New Portal

Last Friday, my iPhone slipped out of my hand on a sunny afternoon, landed on rocks, shattered its face and permanently launched into disassociation. Bye. Fixing it turned into a longer escapade of insurance approval and wait periods, all of which forced an opportunity.

No phone. For days.

This event coincided with Chris leaving town for the weekend for a soccer tournament with Bo Neve and… with his phone, so then I really didn’t have access to a phone. I could email from my computer (but quickly realized how ‘slow’ email correspondence is compared to text). Eula’s iPad has four phone numbers on it—Chris, my parents, and the two beloved friends who share logistical and parenting life with me. I texted them to report the state of my union and said, “See you when I have a phone again.”Realization #2: I don’t have or know anyone else’s phone numbers.

Context: This is not actually a big deal.

Additional context: This is actually a big deal for the modern human.

More context: I’m probably on my phone a good degree less than the average human and this was still a journey for me.

Of course, I couldn’t let an experience unfold like this without tracking my nervous system and thought patterns. Also, I had shit to do. I wasn’t on vacation or in a chosen tech detox moment where putting a phone away doesn’t have consequences. My work wasn’t super pressing or located on my phone (that was a win) but logistics still needed to happen. Or did they?

There is never a beginning and an end, but I love this winding road one of my girls made years ago. Snow melt leading to a lake leading to a river leading to eternity.

My hypothesis was the obvious. I would feel initial relief, peace from the volume, and some fear and/or FOMO around not being able to reach people. All ensued. Within hours, I sense my whole body decelerate and drop down. Driving around the next morning without a functional phone by my side, I noticed a strange absence. It wasn’t the absence of texts (my notifications are already turned off). It was the absence of a large presence in the car with me, as if a family member wasn’t there. My gawd, had my phone become a member of my inner circle? Yes. I could feel in a felt-sense how ‘The Internet at your fingertips’ slogan had become real, embedded, a living creature in our lives. Now, without it, without any of that possibility, it was just me, the flow of traffic, the magpie on the stop sign, the unhoused man with a cardboard sign saying PRAY, the energy waves coming down from the mountains to grace everyone. Easy, I thought. This feels easy.

I flashed to the 1990’s and my mom holding her cigarette out the car window as she gazed out at the hot Texas sun; me in the passenger seat my head out the window daydreaming and doing the same.

This isn’t a call for the past, but it is a call for something.

Here’s the unexpected part.

It began with the man at Verizon. He couldn’t fix my phone so he gave me verbal directions to go across town to a fixing store. He asked whether I knew 29th street and The Roadhouse Grill. Yes, I could picture that in my mental map of Bozeman. I remembered my high-school years of asking many a 7-11 cashier for directions whenever I lost my way to a volleyball tournament. As Mr. Verizon looked me in the eyes and repeated the directions, everything felt balmy, slow. Eula’s energy dropped down too. She and I drove toward the Fixing Store. She reached for my phone to play music but nope. Enter: The local radio! With commercials and DJs. We laughed a lot listening to the range of music on different stations. The Fixing Store man handed me a cordless touch-tone phone to call customer service where I learned that, if I wanted insurance to cover a new screen, I would have to wait at least 24 hours for approval before anyone could fix it.

“How will I reach you to let you know that it has been approved?” he asked.

We figured out a game of telephone and practically high-fived at the plan. We were teammates now. I thanked him, took his card and texted my mom from the iPad back home (like an answering machine at this point) who then called him later that afternoon for an update and texted me back and that’s how I knew to come back the next day right before closing.

These are teeny details.

What does matter, though?

I could feel more TRUST.

The subterranean kind. Even though I already have a hefty dose of inbuilt trust.

That shocked me.
I expected calm, but I didn’t expect a vast pool of trust to show itself.

Why the trust? I was relying on people exclusively, not devices, to guide me and usher information my way. Then it deepened more—in a simple and subtle way. Eula had a full afternoon volunteering session at an equine learning center. I told the coordinator I was unreachable and my husband was 2-hours away. “If anything happens,” I shared “I trust you to make a good decision.” The stakes were more than none because I wasn’t dropping Eula off to do a puzzle. She would be fixing electric fences, cleaning out a barn full of sharp implements and helping around 1,000 pound animals who are generally mellow until they aren’t. Let me be clear. My mother body wants to be immediately accessible when/if my children need me or get hurt. But here I had to trust, much like my mom must have when she dropped me anywhere. I could feel my body lean toward this adult I had never met, give my trust over to her. Same story a few hours later when I left Eula at a friend’s house for a sleepover where I knew some super high tree climbing was on the docket. Same words to the father, a man I know and trust already. Still, a deeper trust in my body.

Bo Neve as a little one telling me that the trees were "bending to have a conversation" with anyone who walked by. Eula in the desert communing with herself and the water.

I think I was given a chance to feel a trust I already have and can call on more. Trust said, “Don’t forget me.” Let trust come onto center stage instead of hidden in the broom closet. Don’t give into the habit of having my phone with me anytime my children aren’t with me or simply because that’s the way now. Is that wrong? I can hear some of you out there gasping at that parenting move. Even a year ago, I had more trust, would be unavailable often, refused to follow suit, but then, without knowing it, I slipped into the herd way. Phone in jacket pocket. I am wondering. I am remaining curious on what we have normalized and what we can recover.

As in, if I can’t be reached, another adult will step in and care for my child.

As in, I trust myself to suss out a situation or person and make a sound decision before I leave my child there.

As in, I also trust my child to advocate for herself. I trust her.

Being constantly available creates hyper-vigilance in all directions.

Chris has taught me this first and foremost—going paragliding or backcountry skiing (with a Garmin emergency tracker) and telling me that if he’s not home by dark, that is when I can start to mobilize the rescue crew. He won’t be checking in on the regular during those forays into the mountains because he wants to be fully there. Oh, you bet I pushed back with my fear, but he held the line and then I remembered my own need for solitude in wilderness, my own wild adventures that turned out just fine.

Trust.

I want to confront my own privilege here. I can trust in large measure because my children are, on the surface, safe. They are white children. They aren’t transgender. They don’t stand out in any way that would draw attention to them here. They have a thick community of trusted adults. They aren’t being hunted by ICE. I know that these devices have saved lives and linked people in crucial ways. I am not against devices but I am invested in renegotiating THE HOW of them. How we use them. How we have been hooked to our individual and collective detriment.

I want to use my phone like a tool.

Not like a blankie or pacifier or stand-in presence.

Not overused.

Not relied upon to the exclusion of basic and essential human mammal skills.

Yes, I want to be available to my people and I also want to trust that someone else will scoop them up if I’m not there for some reason.

In between the pick-ups and drop-offs, I had 10 minutes to wait in my car. I normally would have listened to a voice text from a friend or sent one or read a book or done something. I watched the mild but noticeable agitation building in my body with this ‘free unproductive time’ and then I spied the blackberries in the grocery bag. Have you ever held one in your mouth for MINUTES before eating it? The texture! The sweet and sour! I studied The Blackberry with all my senses for that time and arrived to Eula widened and delighted. Earlier I found a store by vague memory instead of a map app and had to use my eyes while circling the parking lot twice to find it. It felt good. It felt whole. Pure felt-sense.

What did I miss?

Oh, all the gorgeous connection that happens on my phone. A lot. I love it.

That’s about it.

I didn’t miss the convenience.

Maybe trust outside of devices is hard because we are out of practice.

We are being told we shouldn’t trust each other or even ourselves.

I want to do the opposite.

I want to move closer to others, closer to myself.

How about you?

Tactile before, tactile still, tactile forever,