I spent the last week thinking of this thing and that. I was looking for a topic, some news, any excuse would do. I wanted a reason to call my brother Art.

I wanted to talk to him, and I admit to being shy. I love how we’ve gotten closer in the last few years. I want to stay in touch. I want to cultivate our relationship and keep our now very small family close. But, closeness is not our family habit. We have very little practice.

Now that dad is dead, I figured I’d need a reason to call. Now, though, we had no need to report to each other on how dad was doing, or what he needed. We no longer had to tag each other for help, or provide a shoulder to cry on when things got hard.

So, I hemmed and hawed, and finally I wrote him a letter just saying hi and I’m thinking of you. I might even have told him it was raining, but nothing big. I just wanted to touch in.

Anna Michael told me a letter, or a phone call for that matter, only has to contain one interesting thing to be well received. One interesting thing! And as strange as it sounds, I didn’t think I had anything.

And then last night…

Art called to tell me it was snowing in Los Alamos.

That may not be big news in our world right now, but his call taught me a great lesson.

We don’t need a reason to stay in touch.

We just need to stay in touch.