Grandma's Video Call

Every Sunday evening, Sam's family called Grandma Carol, who lived hundreds of miles away and always asked the exact same first question — "What did you learn this week?" — like it was the most natural thing in the world to ask a ten-year-old, and like she genuinely expected a real answer every single time.

Most weeks, Sam said something about school — a book report, a science fair idea, the ongoing saga of a class hamster named Waffles. This week, she couldn't help herself.

"I learned a dance," she said, practically bouncing in her chair in front of the laptop camera, unable to sit still. "Can I show you?"

"Well, of course you can show me," Grandma Carol said, already leaning closer to her own screen, glasses slightly crooked the way they always were by Sunday evening, her face filling almost the whole rectangle of the laptop screen.

Sam stood up, pushed her chair back, and did the shoulder move right there in the kitchen, angling herself so the laptop camera could catch the whole thing, the little webcam light blinking red like it was paying close attention. It wasn't a big space. She nearly knocked over the fruit bowl. She did it anyway.

Grandma Carol was quiet for a second when Sam finished, which worried Sam slightly, until she realised her grandma was just blinking fast, the way she did when she was more moved by something than she wanted to admit out loud.

"Where on earth did you learn that?"

"A lady named Amrit. In Coventry. We drive there every Saturday."

"Every Saturday," Grandma Carol repeated, like she was turning the words over to check they were really true, the same way she checked a recipe twice before trusting it. "Well. I don't know the first thing about it, but I know effort when I see it, and that was effort, and it was wonderful. Do it again, I wasn't looking properly the first time — my glasses had slid down."

Sam did it again, gladly, this time knocking the fruit bowl for real, sending an apple rolling clean across the kitchen floor, and nobody minded even a little.