Monday: how many copies. Wednesday: what one copy did. Friday: Oma.

Monday: how many copies. Wednesday: what one copy did. Friday: Oma.

My mother is 79. She has a folder. Paper, two rings, a label on the spine.

"How many copies of your ID have you given out?"
"Four. Maybe five."
"You know the number?"
"I know who has them. It's written in the folder."

I sat there with a phone holding fourteen years of sent messages and could not answer the same question.

She has less technology than any of us and more control than all of us. Not because paper is safer — it isn't. Because she kept a record, and we never built one.