One of the year’s best father-daughter moments came at the end of a long phone call with my mom.
Before handing off the telephone, my mother ended our recent talk this way: “Ask your father what he’s been doing with his computer.”
That alone was intriguing.
A couple years ago, my brother, sister and I pooled our money to buy our father a Dell laptop. An ancient desktop computer had gone unused at my parents’ Spokane home for years.
This is a man who’ll sit in his den using a mechanical adding machine, the kind with paper tape. On his drop-leaf desk is a black Bakelite rotary phone. It’s no kitschy reproduction; my parents have used that phone since the 1940s. To them, it’s no antique. It works fine.
So my 84-year-old father got on the phone. His news was astonishing. He might as well have said he’d booked passage on a spaceship to Mars. All he’d done was go to his bank and ask folks there to get him started with online banking.
Now, he’s paying his bills online. Hearing that, about all I could manage was “Wow, Dad. I don’t even do that.” It’s true, I don’t. This is a woman who writes checks at the grocery store (sorry if you’re behind me in line).
As recently as last Thanksgiving, my dad trusted his new technology so little that he’d sometimes call to ask if I’d gotten an e-mail he just sent. Now he trusts that his bills are paid with a few mouse clicks? And that he’s done it correctly, and it’s safe?
He’s so sold on his newfangled financial dealings that he complains about businesses and agencies that won’t accept electronic payments.
Apparently, the city of Spokane is somewhat behind the times. My dad scoffs at the idea of typing in a credit card number to pay a bill. “That’s not the same, that’s not online bill-pay,” he said.
This probably sounds patronizing, but it’s not meant that way. With dizzying changes in everything from making plane reservations to paying to park in downtown Seattle, my elders aren’t the only ones with challenges.
My kids gave me a digital camera for my birthday – last October. I’m only now making my own prints at the drugstore.
The funny thing about my dad, he’s a creature of longstanding habit, careful and old-school. In my childhood home, at the end of the kitchen counter, there’s a newel post. That’s where my dad puts letters and bills ready for mailing. Since childhood, I’ve seen his tidy stacks of stamped envelopes on the counter next to that wooden post.
Change that routine? I’m impressed.
My father and his twin sister were born at home in 1923, upstairs in a bungalow house in Reardan, a farm town in Eastern Washington. The town still has only about 600 people. When he was a boy, they’d go by horse-drawn sleigh to Spokane in the winter. During harvest, my 10-year-old dad was already driving wheat trucks.
He’s lived through a lot. He’s seen everything change. He’s still learning.
I only hope that at his age, in 2038, I can brag to my middle-aged children about mastering goodness knows what – some future equivalent of online bill-pay.
A child of the Depression, my dad was prodded by something he never imagined – the 41-cent stamp.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
