Interesting times in tele-sessions

I have been seeing patients by Zoom for over a year now. This past week two unusual things occurred in sessions with two different patients, both of whom I have been seeing for years prior to the pandemic. One could not have occurred in person. I did not say anything at the time to the patients and I thought about why these things occurred, why I remained silent about them, and what was their significance. This is what occurred to me.

One patient, a young, professional woman, had been given away by her mother (her parents) when she was eight months old and then taken back at about three years of age. Our work together had been processing these preverbal traumas and their manifestations throughout her life and presently. Metaphorically speaking, she had been developing her infant emotional life. In this session, she interrupted the session for a number of minutes to answer texts on her cell phone, something that had never occurred before. I sat quietly as she did this. It seemed to me that whatever other actions and meanings were afoot, this was a 'forward edge' [Tolpin] in that she had at last developed into a toddler who could be ‘alone in the presence of the other’ [Winnicott], not needing to pay attention to me nor have me attend to her, but could be perfectly content to ‘entertain’ herself while I was nearby.  

The other patient, a retired, professional woman, will often (over the past fourteen months) see me while still in her nightgown, and sometimes has ‘tea and toast’ during the session. Because it has been inordinately difficult in her life to be close to others, I saw her willingness to ‘dine’ during sessions as an invitation to ‘break bread’ with me, a gesture of wanting to be closer. In this particular session, she decided she had to urinate and instead of excusing herself for a minute, took her computer into the bathroom and continued the session with me. While I could not actually see anything ‘unusual,’ with the exception of her reaching high for the toilet paper, I thought her behavior unusual until I remembered how close girlfriends and spouses might frequently and casually continue their conversations while using the facilities in front of one another. So once again I felt this was an indication of her growing closeness with me.