What’ll i do?
I’m writing this on Thursday. Still no news about my cellphone except for an overwhelming response from my readers, most who enjoy my column and one who really hates me. I don’t know who that is. I have my suspicions, yes, but I better not openly speculate because if it turns out I’m right, I might be tempted to hate right back and I don’t want to do that. That’s a sin, as my husband would say as he tries to fill me with fear of hell.
You know, I went to Smart to report my lost phone and they put a hold on that number so it cannot make any more phone calls but they reissued me the same number. They gave me a SIM card, which I haven’t installed; I really don’t know why. I have an old but very good, very bright red Nokia phone that I can still charge. I know it works. I can install my new SIM card in that phone but something — call it laziness or undying hope — prevents me. First, I can’t find the gadget they gave me to open the little compartment where you fit the SIM. But that should not stop me because I have installed a SIM before using another gadget and it worked. Second, I don’t feel like doing it yet. Maybe my phone will show up. You know — hope springs eternal even when you’re in your old age.
The fun thing about getting a lot of texts from a lot of readers is seeing how generous they are with their advice. Someone told me I should always travel with a companion, a caregiver or someone like that with whom I can leave my cell phone when I go get my visa or do something similar. But don’t you know that I’m a very independent woman? How do you think an independent woman who can still walk and do thousands of things for herself would feel with a caregiver following her around when she’s not falling or failing at small things? Ooops, I failed on a big one. I virtually gave away my phone.
But it is an iPhone. Not a new one. I think it’s a 6. But you can’t open it unless you have my thumbprint or my pass code. So it’s dead in anybody else’s hand. To all the people who told me I should call my phone, I’d been doing that before you even told me to. In the beginning somebody would say the phone was either unattended or something. Then nobody would say anything. I would just get this thick silence. That sort of told me my phone was dead. Since it’s not Lazarus, it would stay dead. Someone told me that whoever finds an iPhone cannot use it but they can open it and sell the parts. Nevertheless I gave myself until today, Sunday, to hear about it from somebody who cares.
Of course, it doesn’t help that as you sit drinking coffee and reading my column I am in Bohol with my husband. We attended a wedding last night and at present I am probably at the airport waiting for our flight back to Manila. No, as I view the horizon regarding my cellphone, I’m beginning to believe I have really lost it and maybe I will install the SIM card in my old phone and accept inquiries regarding my business again. I should just get out of this funk and go on with life. There are a thousand ways to solve my problem. I know exactly what to do. Trouble is — I don’t feel like doing any of it.
There is a wonderful nun I met on the phone. First she texted and then she asked me to call her so we talked. She was a Dominican nun. I told her I thought the nun I gave my phone to was a Carmelite but when I try to imagine her, her habit is not brown. It’s dark blue. “She might be a Benedictine nun,” this wonderful nun said. “But do you know that there are so many orders of nuns? I want to help you but I don’t know how. Just pray to St. Anthony of Padua. Or just pray to St. Jude, the saint of the impossible.”
So every morning I go to my tiny porch and pray my rosary, then the prayers I like from a prayer book I found here at my husband’s condominium. I have a favorite prayer there. It’s so short but to me so right: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the ones I can and the wisdom to know it’s me.”
The wisdom to know it’s me. I’m the one who has to change, not once, not twice, but always. I guess that’s what I really have to do. I guess next week I will buy a new phone.
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