Empty Nest: You Did What in a Limo?

A few weeks ago I got the following e-mail from my son Sam: “MOM,” it began, “GLENDA,* ALLISON* AND I JUST GOT PICKED UP IN A LIMO AND ARE BEING GIVEN A FREE TOUR OF NEW YORK. I LOVE THIS CITY. I am not drunk don't worry. Love you.” The e-mail was sent at 2 a.m. It was now 8 a.m. “Listen to this,” I called to my husband, John, who was getting ready for work in the next room. Halfway through my recitation, John came in half-dressed and launched into an anxious monologue about kidnapping, white slavery, and Sam’s responsibility to young women—friends who had been visiting him—who entrust themselves to his care. John’s darker scenario inspired me to place a just-in-case call to Sam’s cell phone, which he didn’t answer. (Of course, he wouldn’t answer if he had been out until all hours, I reasoned. He was, most likely, asleep—not bound and gagged and on his way to some private compound owned by some international human trafficking ring.) But just in case, I texted Sam: “WHAT????????” I asked as neutrally as possible. “Let me know how this happened, okay???? xxooMOM.”

At first I was not as worried as John, but as I told the story to two friends at lunch and watched the color drain from their faces, I did get a little more anxious. But just then, my cell phone chimed—Sam was awake after his night on the town. Apparently he had been walking back to his dorm with his two comely guests when a limo had pulled up to a stoplight. “Nice limo!” one of Sam’s friends chirped to the driver. He offered them a free tour of New York because, he said, he didn’t have to pick up his clients until 4 a.m. He took them around Manhattan and across the bridge to Brooklyn, let them put their heads through the sunroof, and, even better, open a bottle of champagne and spray it all over the city streets. Then he dropped them off at Sam’s dorm. If you are friends with Sam (which I am), you can see the photos on his Facebook page.

My lunch companions were not relieved by this confession, truthful though it was. Sam jumped into a stranger’s limo? He wouldn’t have jumped in a private car, right? And what if their daughters had been with him? I confess I never reached that level of anxiety, probably because Sam and I have been in touch since the day he left home, thanks to texting, Facebook, e-mail, Skype, and his trusty cell phone. It’s not the same as if he were still living in his bedroom in Houston—and we’re a long way from the days I controlled his every move—but we aren’t experiencing radio silence, either.

I remember very clearly how I communicated with my parents when I went away to school. I called them every Sunday morning—at my small, pricey, experimental college every student had a phone in his or her room—and probably didn’t have much to report, because, frankly, I didn’t go out much. (Maybe if I had, I would have said even less.) Yes, grades were good; yep, classes were fine; indeed, it was cold. On very rare occasions, like when there was really nothing else to do, I wrote them very dull letters. My husband, who is only a few years older than I am, made do with a hall phone he shared with about 20 other people, which means he talked to his parents even less. This was the grim scenario I imagined when we said goodbye to Sam in New York City.

He and I have always had a very talky relationship. I loved hearing all the gossip from his high school—which teacher came in from very long weekends, which kids had broken up and why. Sam was never my best friend—that never seemed like a good idea—but for 18 years he had been a constant in my life, a daily lesson of my limits and gifts, the repository of a love I never could have imagined. Learning to let go was my new project, at which I failed almost immediately. A few minutes after I watched Sam walk down the street, away from us and toward his new life, I pulled out my BlackBerry and texted “Love you.” Within a few seconds he texted back “Love you too.” People can complain all they want about dehumanizing technology, but you won’t hear a bad word out of me on the subject. The fact is, thanks to cell phones, IM, Skype, e-mail, texting, and Facebook, Sam and I have never stopped talking.

Friends with kids already in college suggested this might happen. “He’ll call you when he’s crossing campus, because they hate looking like they are doing nothing when they are alone,” one friend told me. That turned out to be true. It’s also true that I hear the high pitched “thwerp!” of an incoming instant message on Skype so often that sometimes I just have to say … no. I work at home and, unlike Sam, I am not mentally equipped to perform on several different platforms at once.

Among Sam’s generation, there is, of course, a hierarchy of communication devices to which I was once oblivious. Like most of his peers, he claims to dislike the phone. I did not spend his high school years begging him to get off the line, first because he had his own phone but mostly because he preferred the computer. Instead of a ringing phone, I’d walk into a room and hear the sounds of his fingers clacking on the keyboard, first on IM, then on MySpace, and then, when that site became passé after freshman year, Facebook. Soon, he was communicating on two or three different platforms at once: checking Facebook posts, say, while he IM’d friends. (“Don’t you have homework?” I’d ask. “I’m doing it!” he’d answer, pointing to the screen and showing me the five simultaneous conversations he was having for his environmental science class online.)

Until Sam went away to school, he always sounded a little like my husband does when he is between meetings—busy, and not very interested in what I have to say. “So, when do you think you’ll be home?” he would say in his get-to-the-point tone of voice. I still get that response if I happen to call when Sam’s roommate is in the room, but whenever he is between classes or is taking a walk, I get the chatty call, which can go on, as friends predicted, for however long it takes for him to stroll from one destination to another.

E-mail is also somewhat passé, even though I like to start my day by sending him one that wishes him a good day. Like most of his friends, Sam answers them only occasionally, and when I clip and send articles to him—this might come up as a discussion point in class!—I suspect that he sometimes sees them after the fact, if ever.

(“Why do you like texting better than e-mail?” I just asked Sam via Skype’s IM, and feel like I’ve stepped into Pinter for Dummies:

Sam: because when i get an e-mail it sends it to my phone again and its annoying
Sam: hahah
Sam: so every time i send an e-mail it texts me saying MESSAGE SENT or whatever
Sam: so its easier to text
Mimi: Oh, I see.
Sam: because it doesn’t do that
Sam: for a long conversation e-mail is better
Sam: but like, literally long as in sentences
Sam: for a conversation of short things that go on a long time
Sam: texts are better)

Texting is hands-down the preferred method of talking on the go. Sam almost always answers back, and the brevity of the communiqués is mitigated by the immediacy of his response. (“Love you/Love you 2!”) It’s taken me a while to learn to limit my sentences to three or four words—“Dad is driving 24 MPH again” —but I’m learning that it’s the only way to go if I want an answer. (“Oh, no.”) It’s the kind of idle conversation that keeps a relationship knitted together, so that deeper, tougher conversations don’t come out of nowhere. (One recent day included discussions of changing veterinarians and a video about a man who drove his $1 million car into Galveston Bay. “If you drive a $1 million car, what the hell are you doing looking at property in Galveston?” Sam asked rhetorically.) Skype’s IM system also has the benefit of hilarious emoticons. One is supposedly a man taking a bow, but it looks more like a man zipping and unzipping his fly.

We have video-Skyped on occasion as well—the first time was a little like the scene in the Miracle Worker [2] in which Annie Sullivan spells words into Helen Keller’s palm. John and I were misty-eyed over the appearance of Sam live, healthy, and happy if unable to make eye contact. (If you watch the screen you can’t look into the camera, if you look into the camera, you can’t see the people on the screen.) Sam was chagrined that we were so enthused—this isn’t high tech for him—though I thought I saw him fighting tears when we brought the golden retriever into camera range. (Sam will only Skype when his roommate is gone; it’s the 21st century hallway effect.)

And then there is Facebook, which is not that interactive but that’s OK. Do not ask me how I managed to be friended by my son and a few of his pals; I am just grateful. (It happened early in the game, and I never, ever post a comment on anyone’s photos lest I be banished forever.) Facebook means that when I miss Sam but don’t want to bother him, I can still check in on him, or, as he would say, stalk him. I can see photos of him dressed as Waldo in the Greenwich Village Halloween parade or hanging out in Central Park on what looks like a perfect fall day. I can watch him grow older before my eyes—the photos of the gangly kid in Mexico last summer give way to the broad-shouldered young man of today. It warms me to know that Sam is anxious to come home for Thanksgiving. (His status reads “Houston so soon Houston so soon Houston … ”.) One of the things that’s hard about sending a child away to college is that their friends disappear, too. Not so much with Facebook: I can see just how much his friend Jenny is liking her classes at UT, and how much his girlfriend Frances misses him, and that his friend Hunter lost his ID. My favorite was Rachel’s false pregnancy, as displayed in one belly enhanced photo. As Sam would say, hahahaha.

I see and gratefully experience all of this in contrast to my father, who is used to doing everything in person or over the telephone. When my mom was alive, she did all the Web work—buying gifts and making reservations on line. Since her death two months ago, I’ve tried to train my dad to do the same, but to no avail. He drives to the airport to pick up his tickets—trying to help him get his boarding pass online was harder than landing a plane—and, visiting us from San Antonio, he drives to the hotel in Houston to arrange for his room over Thanksgiving. He has always loved doing things in person, making friends with a slew of travel agents, telephone operators, hotel concierges, bankers, and so on. Like my mother, my father used to call me, I recall, just to chat. But my time is different, and we take what we can get, on the fly.

When we finally saw Sam, in person, over Parent’s Weekend, there wasn’t a lot of catching up to do because we had never really fallen behind. We chatted late into a rainy night at a 24-hour joint called Smiler’s, mostly about the books Sam is reading. (John and I decided to read two of them, not as helicopter parents but because we really are interested in the history of disease in America. Still, it does help to bridge a gap or two.) But the best part of the visit was being able to throw an arm around Sam’s shoulders and hold tight, whenever I wanted. I’m hoping soon there will be an app for that.

*Not their real names. Their parents don’t know they were in New York. Don’t ask.

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