How I Know Them

How I Know Them, 2025. Digital photograph taken through FaceTime.

Physical separation from my family limits how I can interact with them, the distance constraining my understanding of the daily intimacies of their lives. I can no longer feel the floor shake when they drop their school or work bag after coming home, the strength of the vibrations telling me how their day went. Nor can I hear, from behind my closed bedroom door, a sigh upon them seeing the dishes that need to be washed after dinner. I am largely stripped of recognizing when and how to love my family, but that distance does not lessen the responsibility. I call them while lying on my dorm room floor, sweaty and sore after coming home from the gym, to hear about what they’re having for dinner or what they ate for lunch. I text them before going to bed as the last thing I do in my day, my shades drawn and lights out, my room dimly illuminated by my phone screen and the cracks in my shades.

While these interactions allow us to maintain a semblance of understanding one another’s lives, the degree of that understanding is reduced from before, and along with it, my ability to express the love and support they need. Instead of witnessing my brother come home and go straight to his room without talking to anyone, my mom has to text me to check in on him. Instead of eavesdropping on my parent’s conversation about whose party to go to this weekend, I watch their icons arrive and leave an unfamiliar house on Find My, unaware a decision has been discussed and made.

Since I am unable to make my own observations, my understanding of their emotional states remains shallow. And the world they live in, which they try to show to me by touring me around dinner tables on Facetime as I awkwardly wave to their friends I’ve never met, or through the pictures they send in our family group chat that have already been cropped and edited, is similarly vague and fragmented. Because of my daily absence, that I can’t accompany them to the grocery store or the post office where we can talk about something or be comfortable in silence, our time together is always active. But there’s not enough time or energy for them to tell me about all of the cute plushies they saw while window-shopping around Japantown, or the variety of peaches and plums and other colorful stone fruits they sampled at the farmers market in the DMV parking lot. And anything outside of our shared existence through our phones, I either don’t think of ever existing or have to imagine for myself.