There are forty-seven unread messages in a group text my sons started in January.

I know there are forty-seven because I can see the number on my phone, in a small red circle, the same way I see the little red circles for notifications I’ve written about before. I used to think those circles were alarming. Now I understand they are informational. Forty-seven messages. I’ve been asleep for seven hours. The math is not reassuring.

The group text includes me, Brian in Cincinnati, Kevin in Columbus, Kevin’s wife Diane, Brian’s wife Sandra, and four grandchildren who have phones now and are apparently never not using them. Nine people. Nine people who have been, at various points since breakfast, texting into a single conversation that lives on my phone and that I am expected to be monitoring. We had thirty-seven messages the first week. It is now June and the numbers have become abstract.

Brian started it. He texted something about Easter plans and added everyone at once, and Kevin responded immediately, and Sandra responded to Kevin, and Diane asked what time, and the grandchildren began, and that was that. We have been in the group text ever since. There is no getting out of a group text. You can leave, which is technically possible, but leaving the family group text requires an explanation, and the explanation would take longer than the group text.

The photographs arrive in waves. There will be a morning where nothing happened, and then, without warning, seven photographs of Tyler’s baseball game. Tyler pitching. Tyler at bat. Tyler in the dugout. Tyler with his teammate. Tyler and the scoreboard. I attended Tyler’s baseball game. I was in the bleachers, twelve rows back, in a blue camp chair I brought from the car. I have my own photographs of Tyler pitching. But now I have twelve, which is fine, because Tyler is eleven and pitching is worth documenting, and I understand that. What I don’t quite understand is the follow-up photographs of the photographs, which is apparently a thing: photographs of the photographs on someone’s phone, sent to confirm the photographs were received.

The plans change four times.

We decided to celebrate Don’s birthday with dinner at Brian’s house on Saturday the ninth. Then Kevin had a conflict and we moved it to the fourteenth. Then the fourteenth became the fifteenth, and then it became a Sunday instead of a Saturday, and by the time we settled on Sunday the sixteenth I had entered four different dates into the kitchen calendar, each one crossed out with increasing conviction. Don suggested I wait for a final confirmation before writing anything down. I found this advice reasonable and also three weeks too late.

The wrong thread incident I will describe briefly.

I received a message from my friend Peg, asking how I was doing, and I composed a reply while also monitoring the family text, and I sent my reply about being tired and possibly coming down with something to the family group instead of to Peg. The family text responded immediately. Kevin wrote “Mom what” and Brian wrote “are you okay” and Sandra asked if I needed soup and Tyler’s younger sister Emma added a small crying face, which I believe was sympathy, though with Emma it can also mean something is funny, and I may have been both. I sent the soup update to Peg. Peg said she hoped I felt better. The family text moved on, as the family text always does.

Don has adjusted to the group text the way Don adjusts to most things. He reads it in the evening with his coffee, the way I read the newspaper in the morning. Once, not twice. He says it helps to think of it as a very long letter from everyone at once. I’ve tried thinking of it this way. It doesn’t account for the forty-seven messages, but I appreciate the image.

Here is the thing about the group text. I miss the boys. They’re in Columbus and Cincinnati and they have full lives, and the grandchildren are growing at the pace grandchildren grow, which is faster than I prefer. The group text is how I know Tyler got the hit. It’s how I see Emma’s drawing. It’s how Sandra shares the thing she made for dinner that Kevin said was the best thing he’d eaten all year. I am in a conversation with my whole family, at any hour, for no particular reason except that they put me there.

I have forty-seven unread messages on my phone. I’m going to read them now, as soon as I find my glasses.