new tricks

Yesterday morning I opened my Gmail account to find a handful of fresh messages from my mother; one was a forward (much to my chagrin) the rest were replies to emails I’d sent her the week before. She and Papa had taken a vacation to Barcelona and returned to Ukraine that morning (their time). By the time I was logged in and “checkin’ email” a la Strongbad, Mom was well into her afternoon over yonder and – I could see – logged into her own Gmail account.

Rather than replying to her various messages, I decided to experiment choosing option C, which was “Reply by Gmail Chat.” Knowing that Mom’s acquisition of a Google email account had been recent I harbored few expectations. I figured I’d be able to convey its merit due to the time change and prohibitive cost of phone-calls while she’s visiting Papa in Ukraine but explaining the how this was going to happen and what she’d need to do? Not exactly.

Mom surprised us all (herself included). Not only did she eventually figure out where to look for the chat box and how to communicate with it, she also learned how to initiate a Gmail Chat conversation with anyone else who might show up on her availability box. The best part was her first contact that initiated the chat string that finally “took”; she was so gleeful to have figured it out I could almost hear it coming through the monitor. For a lady who has struggled with setting up and retrieving voice mails on a cell phone this was a huge step. Bravo, Moms! You are a special lady.