The Internet Thinks We Don't Know Its Secret. But I Do.

She had lived in a nursing home for 10 years, and communicated with her sister, and the world, through Alexa. Two days after Lou Ann died of complications from coronavirus, her sister found recordings of Lou Ann's voice asking Alexa, "How do I get help?" Maybe you are reading this in your bed on your phone wherever you are this morning. I was having what I thought of as a weak stretch in my life, when I didn't have a regular job, and when just deciding what I would do to avoid writing, or having a single thought about my email, was enough to short-circuit me and I would find myself still in pajamas at 5 p.m., pacing and crying, Googling What's wrong with me and waiting until it was OK to go to bed again. In such weak stretches, among the many indulgences I permit myself is the minor suboptimal habit of actually sleeping with my phone. Under the other pillow next to me, where no one sleeps. In other, more robust stretches, my phone spends the night plugged in about a foot away on the nightstand, and I can still reach it if I wake up and want to look at it, but it's tethered. When I let it sleep freely with me, I can turn over while I look at it. I can look at it while I'm lying on my left side, and then I can turn over and look at it while I'm lying on my right side. I just charge it the next day, because it doesn't matter if either of us is ready to go in the morning. On this particular morning I opened my eyes and looked at my phone in the bed next to me, and as I put my hand on it, I said, "I belong to you."