Calling home

My youngest son stretched-out on the couch. He was dressed and ready for school, but his eyes were closed. He was trying to get every little bit of sleep he could, before he had to head out the door.

I looked down at him with a smile. I could relate. I was tired too, but I needed to get off to work. I reached down and gave him a quick squeeze on his shoulder. I was surprised when he reached up, gave me a hug and told me to have a good day.

I walked to the car with a smile on my face.

I raced off to work to a bunch of meetings and was on the go much of the day. I looked up once at my watch to grab a quick sandwich for lunch and was off and running again. It seemed like minutes, but hours later, I looked at my phone to see that I needed to get out the door to drop my son at practice.  And of course, I was late.

My wife and I seemed to passing each other like two passing ships in the night, but when we finally got back together later in the evening, we got a message from our daughter. She sent a photo and a quick note about her training. She finished her note by telling us that she loves us.

We carry our smartphones with us. We used to carry them grudgingly, thinking that we didn’t want to be controlled by technology, but now it’s our lifeline to our family, especially our kids far away.

My wife and I were still talking about photo. In fact, we still had smiles on our face and we got a text from our oldest son asking if wanted to talk on the phone. Did we want to want to talk? Is that even a question? Of course, we wanted to talk.

The call lasted fifteen minutes max or so and he had to get back to work. For my wife and me though it was the cherry on top of the sundae: a normal uneventful Wednesday, out of the blue, became the best day of the week. We got to chat in some way shape or form with all three of our kids.

When we went to bed late that night, we couldn’t help but agreeing: “life is good.”