A video call that asked nothing of anyone

This morning my parents were in England and I was in the US, and for seventy-five minutes my daughter and her grandparents were in the same room.

Not really, obviously. But near enough that all four of us came away from it feeling better about our days.

There was no effort involved. No preparation, no planning, no cost, nothing carried, nothing endured, nothing made. At both ends we pressed a single button, and the whole event required less of us than making a cup of tea.

When the call connected my daughter glowed, and immediately said "call Nanny and D'andad" >> [Grandad]. What she meant was that she could already see them. Then she leaned towards the phone and pouted her lips, asking for a kiss. The grandparents obliged, and the call began.

She worked through her Rolodex of new words, and the animals she had seen in the garden, pointing to where she had seen them and explaining what they were probably doing now. "Sleeping," she decided. We watched, and smiled, and laughed at her quest for progression: in words, in movement, in life.

Ten years ago this call is a phone line and a description. Thirty years ago it is a letter and a photograph that arrives a fortnight late. My daughter would have known her grandparents as two voices and an occasional visit. Instead she knows their faces and they know hers, and none of us had to do anything at all to earn it.

I have spent time arguing that what is given easily is worth less. I do not believe that about this morning, and I am not going to pretend otherwise in order to keep the thesis tidy.