As one of the shortest good-beach weather summers draws to a close, weekend warriors are savoring every bit of forecasted sunshine.  On my weekly trek from New Jersey to Connecticut, traffic on the Merritt Parkway grew heavier with each mile. I scanned the radio stations and listened for something to help pass the time.  Rod Stewart’s gravelly croon caught my attention. He was singing Forever Young, the song I dedicated to my daughter when she graduated high school and I let my mind drift back to 1996.

Emotions ran high that summer before she left for college. I needed her most and she wanted me least. I wanted to hold on and knew I had to let go.  She was ready to conquer the world – her world now, not mine – a world I could no longer control. I had prepared us both for this time over the prior 18 years, so with equal amounts of pride, confidence, and trepidation, I stepped aside and she took the helm and navigated through the years that followed to become the woman, wife and mother she is today.

Instinctively, we want to hold on to the child in our children forever and keep them safe. And whether we send them off to college or to their first apartment, the time comes when we can’t protect them any longer, when we stand in the background and parent from a distance knowing we laid a solid track for them to follow, and we give them wings.

Did you have a pen pal when you were young? I remember mine well.  Her name was Ann Morgan and she was from England. It was exciting to have a “friend” who lived in a foreign country.  We wrote religiously every week and I raced to the mailbox every day in anticipation of her letters.  They arrived in white envelopes with red and blue striped borders and stamps of British royalty sat regally on the upper right corner. My name and address written in cursive with European flair sent a message to anyone who touched it that Ann Morgan and I were friends across the ocean.  We wrote through high school and even a little beyond.  We had hoped to meet one day, then somewhere between high school graduation, college, marriage and children we lost touch.

I met my then-future husband while he was on a 30-day leave from the Navy.  We spent every day of the remaining two weeks together and promised to write when he left.  Once again, I kept the mailbox vigil, for the white envelopes with red and blue stripes. We exchanged pictures and I often packed my letters into boxes filled with oatmeal cookies and other treats from home. We spent the next eleven months learning about each other through our letters and became engaged to marry on his next leave.  We planned our wedding through letters during his second tour of duty in Viet Nam, then somewhere between raising children and growing careers we lost touch.

Important people can slip from your grip before you realize they’re gone.  Aging parents, tenuous marriages, blossoming relationships, growing children, long distance relationships all need nurturing. In our new society of instant messaging and social media networking, it is easy to fall into a false sense of communication security.  Nothing takes the place of personal touch. That’s real contact – person to person skin to skin if possible.

A real pat on the back for a job well done
An affectionate hug to a friend in need
A spoken compliment to a child
A follow-up kiss to the “I-Heart-U” text.

I’m all for saving the environment, but nothing takes the place of a hand-written note of thanks, get well wish or expression of condolence.  When was the last time you really reached out and touched someone?

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