Late-Night Calls with Mom By Katherine Emery General

In the 1980s, when I was raising my children, landline phones were our lifeline. My yellow rotary phone hung on the wall in the kitchen, its long, coiled cord stretched across the room while we talked. There were no text messages or FaceTime calls then, just the familiar hum of a dial tone and the comfort of a voice on the other end.

Most evenings, after my babies were tucked into bed and the house finally grew quiet, I would call my mom. At that time, I was living first in California and later in Hawaii, while she was all the way in Wyoming. The distance between us felt enormous, but somehow, the phone made it smaller.

We would talk for over an hour, about the children, our family, her friends, my friends, the weather, what I was cooking, and how her garden was doing. It wasn’t the big news that mattered most, but the sound of her steady, loving voice. After I called her, she always said the same thing: “Hang up, I’ll call you right back.” She insisted on paying for the long-distance call, never wanting me to worry about the cost.

I always kept a notebook next to the phone, part reminder pad, part sketchbook. While we talked, I would jot down to-do lists, calendar reminders, or phone numbers, then fill the margins with little doodles and swirls. Those pages became a quiet record of our nightly conversations, my drawings looping across the paper as her words filled the room.

While exploring and expanding my painting and knitting skills this fall, I found an article about the therapeutic value of doodling.  Research has shown that engaging in  creative activities can activate the brain’s reward center, releasing dopamine, the brain’s feel-good neurotransmitter.

One of the most beautiful aspects of doodling is its ability to transform chaos into creation.  Doodling taps into the part of the brain that fosters self reflection and introspection, which can be profoundly healing. In a world that often demands swift solutions and immediate results, the power of doodling offers a different perspective.

At the end of our lengthy talks, my mom would often laugh softly and say, “Well, we’ve solved the world’s problems, so the only thing left to say is, I love you.” And that’s how every conversation ended, with love that reached across the miles, carried by a simple landline phone, a tablet full of doodles, and a mother’s voice that I can still hear in my heart.