My Mom is Introduced to the Internet, Though She Really Wanted the Oracle at Delphi

My mother is 86 years old. She grew up on a Minnesota farm and remembers when her house was wired for electricity.

For years I've been encouraging her to learn some computer skills. I have told her how much fun she could have on the Internet. She could chat with other people who have attended one-room schoolhouses. She could track down old friends. She could read the news from papers around the world. She could improve her German.

But her resistance to learning about the Web, indeed learning anything new--card games, a handicraft, her fellow seniors' names--is frustrating, so I mostly just let her be.

A few days ago, however, she and I were looking for some place to eat on Thanksgiving Eve. The only place that was open in downtown Racine, Wisc., was a coffeehouse. There we had sandwiches, and there I introduced her to the Web.

As we ate, I enticed her with: "Think of a question, Mom, any question, and I'll show you how we can find the answer on the Internet." This confused her. "A question?" she asked. (Well, I guess that was a question, right? Hmmm...) "Yes, Mom, like how many gallons of water leave the mouth of the Nile River every minute or how many one-room schoolhouses are left in America. What are you interested in finding out?"

After much prodding on my part and much confusion on hers, she finally hit upon: "Why did my brother die so young?"

Wow, of all the questions in the world, this was on her mind. "I'm sorry, Mom, but it has to be something we can actually find on the Internet."

She tried again: "Where's my grandson at this moment?" And: "What are you and I going to do tomorrow?"

Obviously, she thought she was standing before the Oracle at Delphi. "Mom, computers aren't that sophisticated yet," I said. "They can't answer such personal questions like that. It has to be something concrete and public."

She finally hit upon "How far is it to the moon?" Bingo!

After that, she got really excited. We looked up her grandson, Aaron Ziolkowski, and found a review he had written for Music Connection magazine posted on the band's Web site and a letter to the editor at Thrasher, a skateboarding magazine.

I let her type in one of her queries, but for every letter, she typed a dozen. "You'd have to develop a much lighter touch, Mom. You don't have to bang it like you do a typewriter."

This was a freak experience, to be sure. My mother has already gone back to her shell, uninterested in doing anything except take her pills and shuffle about with her walker, saying she's lived too long and making herself as helpless and weak as possible.

But for a few moments in a coffeehouse in Racine, Wisc., on Thanksgiving Eve 2007, her face was lit up to a brand-new, wired world.