Communication in the Modern Age

My mother and two of her sisters, Grace and Dorothy live in Hawaii.  They have a brother in Tokyo and another sister, Atchan in Sendai.  The four sisters are very close and keep in constant contact with each other and over their brother.  In Hawaii, the sisters have their phone calls.  With the sister in Sendai, my mother loves writing letters.   When a letter arrives from the aunt in Sendai, mom puts everything down to read it.  Then she calls her two sisters and reads it to them.

circa 1938  Four sisters with their mother in Japan

I suggested they do a Skype video call with my Auntie Atchan, but Auntie Atchan was leery of using the computer.  When I e-mailed my cousins in Japan they said only my cousin, Ricky who works in China had enough computer knowledge to set everything up.

This is rather funny because we saw our then 4 year old granddaughter, KC answering a Skype call on her own last year. We were surprised when she pressed the right buttons on her own to talk to her friend who had moved to Canada as though it was the most normal thing in the world for a child to do.

I was hoping to do a video call when the three sisters would be together at our house for a Cousins Party this month.

When one of my other cousins in Japan said that their mother preferred writing letters and receiving them, I gave up on the computer idea.  I didn't want to pressure my aunt into doing something she didn't want to do.

Imagine my surprise when Auntie Atchan wrote to mom saying that cousin, Ricky was going to set everything up for the video call using Skype when he returned to Japan for a vacation.  I e-mailed Ricky in China and he gave me the Skype addresses he set up for  himself and for his mother.

This coming Saturday, Ricky and I will test it all to make sure things will work on the following Saturday.  Then when we have the cousins party, we'll do this incredible thing of having the four sisters together again using modern technology, if nothing fails...

Needless to say, I'm on pins and needles.