My mother rarely, if ever, picks up the phone when I call her on the first try. Once, she didn’t return my call for days, after which I learned she had been bed-ridden with a cold. The fact that she lives by herself on the other side of the country from me only increases the amount of guilt and worry I feel whenever I’m unable to get a hold of her. After all, I was the one who chose to move away. But as an only child, I know the responsibility falls on me to check up on her. I started using Find My Friends, an iPhone app, to keep tabs on her, following the suggestion of a friend who had done the same with her mom. During a visit home last year, I activated the feature on my mother’s device, which she handed over willingly, though I doubt she fully understood what I was doing. In any case, it gives me some peace of mind to be able to open up the app to see her location whenever one of my calls goes to voicemail, which is always full because she doesn’t know how to delete old messages in her mailbox.