I cannot find the voice recording, the one where in a state of delightful urgency, someone else with better knowledge of how to use a phone has been asked to reach me. It’s easy, just press and hold, talk, and then release to send. That is something I have said many times. My grandmother’s excuse is always that she can’t whatsapp due to the deterioration of her fingerprints, which has come with old age. Whenever she has to prove this point, she rubs her pointer finger on her thumb with a feigned helplessness to show that there is nothing there. 

I imagine that she was leaning over to the microphone end of the phone held by a solicited other: Eagerly, ever-so-slightly over-outstretched in a way that revealed her unfamiliarity with the way phones nowadays work, and their sensitivity to sound. And in that moment I imagine she was still holding the two halves of the egg shells, one in each hand. She first called me by name, little sister. She ends with, you see, how cute is that! A child-like charm in the way her voice goes up, the complete message arrives to me with accompanying photo evidence of the surprise she wanted to share. Two egg yolks in a metal dish, when she had expected one.

I listened to this voice recording from my grandma a couple more times after, when I wanted to remember and relive the softness of a love like this. 0:16 seconds only. Just the love of an ordinary kind, which shares kitchen joys, and doesn’t say much, but does not have to. For this kind of affection, it is love enough just to seek being heard – despite the un-remarkability of what is going to be said, and the lack of fingerprints to facilitate saying it. One day, though, I couldn’t find it. It was a few years back, in a Hong Kong taxi when I found myself scrolling up, hitting a wall of nothing, and just like that it was gone. When the taxi stopped, I got out and assured myself with the merciful lie that it was not so great a loss. One day, I might forget that this voice recording ever existed. But I did not. I still remember. I couldn’t find it then, and I know I certainly won’t be finding it anymore now. I sometimes feel that the memory of how it sounded is fading, but every once in a while it echoes back.