I don’t video chat.
I should probably clarify. It’s not that I “prefer not to” or “tend to avoid it” or any of the gentle ways people describe the things that make their skin crawl. I don’t video chat. Period. I will find any exit. I will cite bad WiFi, dying batteries, a sudden and urgent need to be literally anywhere a camera isn’t pointing at my face. I have declined video calls from people I genuinely love because the idea of being watched while I talk makes my entire nervous system stage a walkout.
So when my brother called me on video and I missed it, there was a perfectly reasonable world where I just… didn’t call back.
But it was a birthday. Not mine (I would never). A kid’s birthday. A kid I haven’t seen in a while because families are complicated in ways that don’t fit into a single blog post, or even a single conversation, or honestly a single lifetime.
I’d already made the bookmark. It had been sitting on my workbench, finished and waiting, because I couldn’t send it yet. Laser-engraved, 3mm wood, a character he loves. The kind of thing that looks simple but took four rounds of testing to get the settings right, because that’s how my brain says “I love you.” Not with words. With process. With dialing in speed and power until the lines are clean and the wood doesn’t char.
I told myself I was going on lunch in fifteen minutes. That was a lie. I’d already been on lunch for fifteen. I needed the buffer. I needed time to stop vibrating at a frequency only anxious mammals can hear, take a breath, and convince my body that a phone screen was not, in fact, a threat.
I took a moment to pet Finn. Another moment to take a deep breath. Then I called back.
Eight minutes and ten seconds. That’s what the call log says. In that time, a kid showed me his new toy, told me he loved me, called me a great aunt (his words, not mine, and I will be holding onto that until the heat death of the universe), and then told me he loved me again. Just in case I missed it the first time.
Someone in the room asked him if he wanted to see my face on the screen. They expected him to say no, probably because they know I never do this and figured the camera would be off. But nobody told the kid that script. He just said yes. Because he’s six. And six-year-olds don’t hedge.
So there I was. On camera. Being seen. Doing the thing I never do, for a person who didn’t know it was hard.
That’s the part that sticks, actually. He didn’t know it was hard. To him, his aunt was just… there. On the phone. Talking about Mario and Yoshi. (He loves Yoshi. Mario too, he guesses. His commitment to ranking his favorite characters is beautifully noncommittal and I respect it deeply.)
I think there’s this idea that reconnecting with family is supposed to be a big dramatic moment. A hug at an airport. A tearful reunion over a holiday table. And sure, sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s four minutes on a video call you almost didn’t make, after lying about your lunch break to buy yourself time to stop shaking.
Sometimes it’s making bookmarks you can’t send yet.
Sometimes it’s the person on the other end saying “yeah, he’s been talking about wanting to see his family,” and realizing that the door you thought was locked was just closed. Not the same thing.
I don’t know what happens next. I don’t need to know tonight. I know I have a sixteen-second video clip of a kid in a birthday shirt telling me he loves me, and I know I made his bookmark weeks ago because I was already hoping for exactly this.
My brain builds things when it can’t say things. That’s not a flaw. That’s the whole shop. That’s every coaster and every sticker and every engraved piece of wood that’s ever left my workbench. It’s all just a version of “I love you” run through a laser.
Eight minutes and ten seconds. Two “I love you”s. One aunt who doesn’t do video calls, doing a video call.
Some doors you don’t kick open. You just stop pretending they’re locked.
Laura runs Neurospice Design Shop from North Carolina with the help of one raccoon, one judgmental cat, one very patient partner, and a brain that won’t shut up. Browse the shop on Etsy or poke around the Bestiary Oracle right here on the site.