PHONE BASKET? –
Jan. 17, 2026 – And so we settled in, with my mother in her recliner, my father on one couch, and me on another. Almost by instinct, my parents reached for their iPads. I caught myself scrolling through my phone without any real purpose. In that silence, I had a moment of clarity: This was supposed to be the time for conversation — for catching up in person. And here we were, on our devices. Even their 3-year-old Kooikerhondje, appropriately named Jersey, seemed bored.
A couple of days later, we drove four hours to my sister’s house in Maryland. I played with my niece and nephew, and my parents drifted back to their screens. I felt a surge of nostalgia for a kind of closeness that didn’t need to be scheduled or prompted. I thought of growing up and the holidays spent at my grandparents’ house when my grandfather would play Christmas music on vinyl, and we would sit around their dining room table for three or four hours.
On Christmas Eve, I boarded another plane to San Francisco to spend Christmas with my fiancée and her family in the Bay Area. Sixteen people gathered in a small living room off the kitchen for 11 hours. Voices crashed through the room. Parents, siblings, nieces, aunts, uncles. It was so loud, I took Advil twice. The only screen in sight was a digital fireplace burning on the TV. In the last couple of hours, we projected the game Codenames on the wall — a word game that demands conversation and debate, which brought even louder shouts and chaos.
