ET Phone Home

When my daughter left for college three years ago I hardly noticed she was gone. We saw each other a lot in the first few months and she called me everyday sometimes three times a day.

I use to joke with one of my colleagues who had a son entering his freshman year that I would forward one of my daughter's daily calls so she could hear about college life as she was limited to once a week at best from her son.

Once a week did not sound unreasonable at the time. After all I did not talk to my mother more than once a week, but that was long before the advent of cell phones, text messaging, email, facebook and skpe, all of those cheap to free means of communication which also offer the anonymity of not really having to "talk" at all.

What is so hard about sending an email? After all there is a lot of news. Classes have started I barely know what he is taking much less who is teachers are, how many kids in his classes (is it really an 11:1 student to faculty ratio for which I am paying dearly), who his new friends are, how the food is, what his roommate is like, how he likes his new baseball teammates?

Just a few short months ago I knew everything, or almost everything. Now I know nothing not what he is doing and not even who he is doing it with.

I find some comfort in bemoaning this condition with his sister. She too is left in the dark and missing the daily connections with her best friend and mine. But I find I am enjoying the regularity of her calls all the more so maybe his absence is to bring me closer to my daughter and that is certainly not a bad thing.

But ET, you can still phone home!