The first time someone made me do the math, I was at a kitchen table in Frisco, Texas.
I had just told a friend that I see my mother twice a year. Once in summer when I take the kids back to northern Haiti. Once at Christmas if she travels, or if I do. He didn't say anything for a minute. Then he asked how old she was.
“Seventy-two,” I said.
He picked up a napkin and wrote a number.
Average life expectancy in Haiti is 63. My mother had already outlived her statistical curve by nine years. By US tables — the more generous ones — she'd reach 79. That's seven more years.
Two visits a year, seven years.
Fourteen.
I have fourteen more times to see my mother. If everything goes well.
Most people refuse to count.
Almost nobody I know has done this math. Not for their parents, not for their children, not for the friends they keep saying they'll call.
The math feels morbid until you do it. Then it doesn't feel morbid at all — it feels useful. You stop saying “someday” and start picking up the phone.
Three reasons most people avoid the number:
One. We're wired for infinity. Our parents have always been there. Our brains can't process their absence in advance.
Two. The math feels like inviting bad news. Like saying it out loud makes it real.
Three. The numbers in casual conversation lie. “We see each other all the time” usually means three times a year.
But the math is already real. The number exists whether you look at it or not. The only question is whether you make decisions with it or without it.
CALCULATE YOUR NUMBER
Three questions. One number.
Who you're thinking about, their age, how often you see them. The calculator does the rest.
Open the calculator →What I did with fourteen.
When I sat with the number, three things happened.
First, I bought a plane ticket. Not for next month — for next week. The trip wasn't optimal. The work calendar didn't want it. I went anyway because the math said it didn't matter.
Second, I changed the rhythm. We started calling on Sundays instead of “when I have a chance.” The “when I have a chance” calls happened maybe once a month. The Sunday calls happen every week because they're on the calendar.
Third — and this is the one nobody warns you about — I stopped wasting visits. I used to spend the first day in Pilate processing logistics and the last day saying goodbye. Now I just sit on the porch. I drink the coffee she makes. I let her tell me the same story about my grandmother. The visits got slower and longer at the same time.
You don't get more visits by working harder. You get them by accepting that the count is finite and then refusing to waste the ones you have.
The math depends on you, too.
The other thing the calculator surfaces — and this is the harder part — is that the math depends on you, not just on them.
If you're in your fifties and your parents are in their seventies, the limit might be theirs. But if you're in your forties and your kids are teenagers, the limit is yours: your bandwidth, your attention, your choice to show up.
The same number means different things in different relationships:
With aging parents: the count is closing fast.
With young children: the count is closing in a different direction. They'll grow up and leave home, and the days under one roof get scarce fast after age 15.
With a long-distance friend: the count depends entirely on whether either of you decides to make a plan.
With a partner: the count is shared, which means whoever ends up alone at the end is the one who outlives the other. That's the deal.
None of these are sad. They're true. Treating them as sad keeps people from looking. Treating them as true lets you plan.
Four things that work.
A few practical things I've done since I started counting:
The Sunday call. Doesn't matter the time. Doesn't matter the topic. After enough Sundays, they'd notice if it didn't come — and that's the relationship.
The two-day minimum. When I visit, two days minimum. One day is logistics. Two days is presence.
The “next visit” question. Before I leave anywhere — Haiti, the friend in Boston, the brother in Mexico — I plan the next visit before I leave the current one. Sometimes it doesn't happen. But putting it on the calendar shifts the default from “maybe” to “scheduled.”
The honest yes. When my mother asks me to come visit, I say yes or I say no — but I don't say “I'll see.” “I'll see” is how people lose six or seven of their fourteen visits without noticing.
Yours is whatever yours is.
This isn't supposed to scare you. Or it is — but only the way a fire alarm scares you. Useful information, not a sentence.
You have a finite number of times you'll see the people who matter most. You can count them. You can act on the count. You can refuse to waste them.
The math doesn't change. The number is the number. The only variable is whether you let the count quietly run down while you stay busy, or whether you spend the next one this Sunday.
I have fourteen.
Yours is whatever yours is.
— Jacques
Built in Texas and Haiti.