Chapter 5 - WHY DAD BUILT A CAMERA INTO A TIMERDad did not believe in cloud cameras.
Too hackable.
Too obvious.
Too dependent on subscriptions, according to him.
He also loved tinkering.
Twenty years earlier he had installed motion sensors before normal people knew what home automation was.
Sixteen months before his death, prescription medication began disappearing from the kitchen.
Not Mom’s at first.
Dad’s.
He took:
Blood thinner.
Blood-pressure medication.
Statin.
Occasional prescribed sleep medication after hospitalization.
He blamed himself.
Then Mom.
Then the pharmacy.
Maria was not there yet.
Dad told no one except his friend Samuel Price, a retired electrical engineer from the family business.
Samuel helped him put a tiny battery-powered motion camera into the old kitchen timer shell.
The front still functioned mechanically.
The digital module recorded when motion occurred in its field.
MicroSD.
Local storage.
No network.
Dad positioned it beside the fruit bowl facing the medication drawer and much of the kitchen.
He told Samuel:
“If I start forgetting things, I want proof before the kids start deciding what I remember.”
Samuel thought that was dark.
Dad thought it was practical.
Then he never told me.
Of course.
Whitmore family communication philosophy:
May you like
Document everything.
Explain nothing.
Related Stories
