Three Generations, One Video Call
by FionaMacAllister · 12 July 2026 · Family & Generations
Fiona MacAllister organizes weekly video calls connecting three generations of her dispersed family across Edinburgh, Toronto, and Auckland, a role she never officially claimed but always carries. The story reflects on the quiet, unglamorous labor of maintaining family bonds across time zones and the emotional weight of asynchronous lives. Amid the exhaustion of scheduling, she finds meaning in her elderly mother's face lighting up at the sight of grandchildren on screen.
Fiona MacAllister organizes a weekly video call between three generations of her family, spread across Edinburgh, Toronto, and Auckland, a job she never officially took on, yet somehow still carries, because she's always the one who sends the first reminder. Her mother, eighty, in a care home in Edinburgh, barely understands the technology, but her face, when the grandchildren from New Zealand appear on the screen, is the same every time: a light Fiona sees at no other moment of the week.
What preoccupies her most is the asynchrony her family now lives in. When it's Sunday afternoon in Edinburgh, it's already Monday morning in Auckland, her grandchildren need to leave for school soon, her daughter yawns over her coffee, while her mother, who usually goes to bed early, stays awake specially for this one call. The time difference, once just a technical footnote for travelers, has become a daily negotiation for Fiona's family: whose tiredness matters more today than whose alertness.
She's learned that the real work of family cohesion today no longer consists of grand gestures — a move, a shared house, a Sunday dinner — but of the dull, repeated effort of finding, week after week, a time that's perfect for no one but just barely works for everyone. Sometimes, she says, that doesn't feel like closeness — it feels like an administrative task. But then she sees her mother's face at the sight of the grandchildren and knows what it's for.
We're not a family that sits together at a table anymore, Fiona says. We're a family that sacrifices its time zones for each other. That's not the same as it used to be. But it's still something.
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