relative closeness

When I was young I remember my parents being able to see their parents and siblings every couple of years. My father was in the Air Force so it wasn't a simple thing to visit us. Phone calls shortened the time a bit, but sacrificed the face-to-face interaction and the potential for a number of them being together.

My brother and sisters are spread out too, though not as far as the distances my parents dealt with. I, however, can chat with them every week by simply hoping on-line at the agreed upon time. We could do it more often, but haven't found a reason to do that yet. What we chat about isn't any more amazing than other families talk about, but we can do it cheap and often and have begun to do so. I suspect we will rig up the cameras and microphones on our machines before long too and open the communication window a bit more like we have when we are face-to-face.

Our communities are changing rapidly with our new world, but I think some of us are returning to the closeness we used to have long ago when families stayed in the same basic area. These tools enable us to do it and our need for community drives us. That means our sense of family is being re-engineered again.