📹 My son moved abroad years ago and our calls keep getting shorter every year

Same time next week, appa, my son used to say at the end of every call, back when the calls ran forty minutes and covered everything from his new job to the price of tomatoes in his neighborhood over there. That was six years ago, right after he moved. Now the calls land every couple of weeks, ten minutes if I am lucky, and end with a rushed goodbye because the baby is crying somewhere in the background. He is married now, works long hours, has a small daughter I have met twice in person and mostly know through videos his wife forwards on birthdays. None of that is wrong exactly. People get busy, families grow outward, I understand the shape of it even as I mind it more than I probably should. His mother handles the distance better than I do, she has her own circle of friends here and stays busy enough that the short calls do not seem to weigh on her the way they weigh on me. What I have not told him is that I still open our old chat sometimes just to reread messages from the first year, long paragraphs about his flat, his colleagues, a stray cat he had started feeding outside his building that he named after his favorite cricketer. I have thought about telling him plainly that I miss the long talks, and maybe I will, one of these calls, once I work out how to say it without sounding like a complaint about a life he is allowed to be living on his own terms now. For now I keep the phone charged and close on the days he usually calls, checking it every few minutes once evening sets in there, and take what I get. Ten minutes is still ten minutes, anyway.

Same time next week, appa, I can hear it in my own father's voice. He says the same line to my sister in Muscat and she still calls him every Sunday, even for 10 minutes. Short calls are still calls. A photo of the baby sent in the morning gave my father more joy than a long chat. Could you ask your son to send a short voice note on weekdays?