Creative Maintenance

by Frank D. Quattrone

In this fast-moving cyber age, when families scatter across the continent at the drop of a job or the collapse of a marriage, maintaining relationships can be more of a challenge than ever. The old days of the traditional extended family, with grandparents, their children (maybe several of them), and their children’s children all living under one roof, are now part of our social history.

To keep up with these rapid changes, good friends and family members living far apart must learn new skills and stay as close to the cutting edge of modern technology (and travel bargains) as possible, while retaining their old-fashioned desire. “I’ll do anything to be with my kids/grandkids/friends” must be the mantra for those of us who don’t want to lose the close contact, the joy of discovery, and the warmth and touching that even frequent phone calls can’t bring.

Plan Non-Holiday Times Together
One of the secrets of remaining close to your family over a long distance is to see each other as often as possible during the course of a year. Plan gatherings, either with you or with them, not just at Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Chanukah but also for birthdays, for bat mitzvahs, and—this is important—for other times not fraught with the freight of holiday expectations, birthday surprises, and the like.

A perfect example is the four-day trip my wife Eve and I made to Phoenix, Arizona, in May of this year to visit daughter Barbara and son-in-law David and to see our two granddaughters perform—literally! Allison, our blue-eyed, blonde, curly-locked soon-to-be 8-year-old cuddle bunny (we arrived four days before her birthday), was scheduled for soccer tryouts for an age-specific local team. Melissa, our precocious, talented 12-year-old artist-in-the-making (excuse me—artist now), had the fairly showy role of Pepper in her Tesseract School’s production of Annie and was the star of her school’s original annual movie, which was still being filmed by day even as rehearsals for Annie continued. Melissa also serves as editor-in-chief of Tesseract’s school paper, her second consecutive year at that post.

The trip was a blast, as we were able to spend quality time watching Allie, a golden blur with flying hair and flashing feet, run circles around older and bigger players on the soccer field. She is a bundle of energy and joy who delighted in plopping herself down on Grandmom’s or Grandpop’s lap after a particularly challenging set.

During another Phoenix visit, in August 2005, we built in an overnight trip to the Grand Canyon. It was Barbara’s special surprise for us. Sharing long drives through the striking landscape of Arizona and hikes across the red hills of Sedona and the monumental grandeur of America’s greatest natural wonder created memories that will last a lifetime.

We’ve even developed a special relationship with our son-in-law, David. During one family visit to Columbus, Ohio, where Barbara, David, and the girls lived at the time, he arranged an exciting day trip to Cleveland so that he, Melissa, and I—confirmed music lovers all—could experience the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame together. It was a trip we will never forget.

Develop Mini-Traditions
To maximize mutual warmth and closeness with your precious loved ones, be as flexible as you can, because changing circumstances—from unexpected illnesses to flight delays—demand that you chip away any rigidity that’s built up over the years. You also have to adopt “mini-traditions” that your family members, especially your grandchildren, come to expect and enjoy each time they see you on either one’s turf. In our case, with Allison, she loves the Japanese dining experience, especially the ringing humor and theatrics of a good hibachi restaurant. Whenever she visits us here in the East, she relishes having a one-on-one outing with dear old Grandpop at Ooka, her favorite. So we’re sure to plan a hibachi evening, either here or in Phoenix, as often as we can.

Allie also loves to watch Grandmom Evie applying makeup in the morning before going to work. From this they’ve developed their own rituals, with Grandmom teaching Allie all about makeup, buying her child-friendly makeup kits to practice with, and taking her to a favorite spot, Jolie Salon & Day Spa in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, for a manicure, pedicure, or complete makeover, just like Grandmom (even if she does go swimming with her cousins afterward and sees her lovely new ’do go pfft!). The staff at Jolie welcomes Allie each time she returns, treating her like the princess she is. The same holds true for the staff at Mirna’s Café, also in Blue Bell, where Grandmom and Allie repair for a midday repast following their beauty treatment (not that either needs it). Evie continues these girly sessions with Allie even during our visits to Phoenix. It’s always something to look forward to—a little tradition filled with anticipation and high spirits that helps keep them close.

Create Natural “Internships”
Our relationship with Melissa is much the same. From the time she was able to hold a telephone—whether in Phoenix or Columbus, where the family lived for several years before returning to Arizona three years ago—we’ve always found time to talk on the phone, no matter how busy we are. And we take much interest in her computer-related activities. She also loves history and reading, which she comes by naturally. (Grandpop, after all, has been a professor of English for more than two-thirds of his life and enjoys writing about historical subjects.)

I’ll never forget how exciting it was some years ago to explore Beethoven on the Internet with Mellie. She knew the composer’s music better than any 8-year-old could be expected to (and probably better than most adults), so we searched the Beethoven sites and came upon one that made a connection between Beethoven’s revolutionary changes in music and the American Revolution (which she was also studying in history class). In a flash, we were finding Washington and Franklin links on the Web and planning trips to some of Philadelphia’s outstanding historical sites.

Playing a hunch (because I’ve always known how inquisitive and probing Melissa is), I asked her during a winter phone call—she was not feeling well at the time—if she’d like to write for my weekly arts and entertainment paper, called Ticket, when her family came for their annual summertime visit. Having seen Ticket many times over the years (and always intrigued by my articles and the people I interview and places I explore), she brightened palpably. Her resounding “Yes!” has led to a budding career in journalism.

At the age of 10, just two summers ago, Melissa began writing for Ticket. Her articles featured local attractions as they might be enjoyed by children. Since that fruitful beginning (she wrote four articles that summer), she has continued to impress my readers, as well as staff writers and editors, with a second round of writing last summer. She has a few articles sprinkled in between, during a winter visit, and even a phone interview she conducted from her home in Phoenix. I eagerly await her third summer sojourn with Ticket this year, as do my readers.

Recently, at Valley Forge National Historical Park, when I met Amy Needles, the director of Once Upon a Nation, and began to tell her about my gifted young correspondent, she quickly made the connection. “I know who Melissa is,” she said. “She wrote that fabulous story on the Benjamin Franklin exhibit at the National Constitution Center last year. Everybody loves her there! She is so talented.”

Mais oui! And as editor-in-chief of the Tesseract Times, the very poised Melissa interviewed former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor during that great lady’s visit to Tesseract last fall. To keep Melissa ready for outstanding opportunities like this, we talk about the writing process all the time—how to conduct interviews, how to open with enticing leads, how to get writers to meet their deadlines, and more.

During her summer visits, after lunch at Zakes Cakes & Café, our favorite restaurant, Melissa comes to the newspaper with me after covering a story, plops herself down at a computer (when my colleagues aren’t pestering her), and writes or helps me with little bits of journalistic business. It’s so much fun, and incredibly stimulating, to watch this beautiful, intelligent young lady growing up before my eyes, full of verve and confidence and inspiring respect and affection in others. And the traditions of long-distance communication we practice makes all of this possible.

Dining Out with the Twins
And then there are the little ones—our tall and lithe, blue-eyed and blonde twin granddaughters, Jennifer and Samantha, now 6. From the time they were just a year old, living in Chicago with their daddy and mommy, we’ve made it a point to celebrate our birthdays and do special things together, no matter where they are or how the circumstances of our lives have changed.

I was born on May 1. Their birthday is May 2. So we’ve forged a very natural bond. One year we watched the birds, sea lions, and chimpanzees at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, the nation’s oldest. Another year, we visited a colorful, multi-ethnic street fair, and another, a child discovery center. Now that divorce has changed their lives, and they live with their mother in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, we see them more than ever. They’re still not next door, but now they’re only about 45 minutes away, considerably closer to us than when they lived in the Windy City. Since Grandmom Evie and I have become constants in their lives, we’ve begun to take them out with us as we go about our normal routines, which include visits to local restaurants. Their daddy often joins us on these dining excursions when he comes to town.

One of my primary responsibilities as editor of Ticket is to cover the local dining beat, so Grandmom Evie and I will take the twins with us to meet the chefs and owners of our favorite eateries. Their dad is a pretty good cook in his own right, so among us (their mom has also helped in this regard), we’ve taught Jenny and Sammy how to order in a restaurant and encouraged them to try new dishes. They love digging into calamari fritti, for example, at Venezia Italian Restaurant and creating do-it-yourself desserts at the Zebra Striped Whale. Their eyes grow to mini-moons as they watch Dale Fickett stretch fudge at D’Lectables, and they never hesitate to ask if they can try something they find especially colorful or aromatic basking on our plates.

Intimacy Is King
As always, however, it’s the intimate moments that really count—whether you share them in Columbus or Phoenix, Chicago or Collegeville. Your family has to know that they’re always the center of your universe. It could be the stories you read at bedtime, when snuggles reign supreme, or the secret giggles and quiet “conspiracies” you concoct together over cereal and pancakes while everyone else is still asleep. (The twins love finding new hiding places for “Teddy” to protect him from their daddy, who’s been known, through winks and smiles, to put poor Teddy in the cactus.) It could be watching Allison’s rainbow-eyed, stuffed “Giraffey,” high on freshly slurped “coffee, coffee, coffee” (as dry as it can be—imagination works wonders!), climb the bookshelves in an excess of silly energy. It could be creating elaborate “drills” on the trampoline out in Phoenix, when Mellie and Allie and their visiting cousins, the twins, “do the monkey” or “make like a snake” or “preen like a pussycat” as they bounce and bounce and squeeze their imaginations in reaching for the sky, amid laughter that never ends.

Because the time you can spend with your loved ones tends to diminish as the miles increase, you must never let up. (This is true with grown children, nieces and nephews, grandkids, and friends—anyone dear to you living far away.) Send them e-mails to remind them of special moments you’ve shared or to tease them with the promise of upcoming trips. Send them packages (snail mail still works, most of the time) with amusing news clippings or cartoons or token mementos of something you’ve recently done, such as the ticket stub from a Phillies (aren’t you planning to go to a game together?) or a decal from the Franklin Institute’s exhibit on King Tut (wouldn’t that make an exciting summer outing?). Pick up the phone just to hear their voices and to remind them that you’re only seconds away.

In these and countless other ways, both intimate and grand, you’ll be certain to create a constant presence over any distance. You'll play a major role in their lives and assure them that they’ll always have the attention, respect, and support of relatives whose love will never be far away, even if a continent tries, however unsuccessfully, to come between you.

For more on communicating with loved ones long distance, visit:
Keeping in Touch
Keeping in Touch Online
Grandparents and Divorce
Long-Distance Parenting
Long-Distance Grandparenting
The Foundation for Grandparenting
Staying in Touch with the Kids Long Distance

Frank D. Quattrone is editor of and dining-out specialist for