In this article:
Join the circus and... keep connected
Keeping in touch through the day
Virtual reunion

Family Connections

As relatives and friends grow apart and the sterility of technology makes us feel detached, some say the Internet actually helps them keep in touch -- and in many cases grow closer.

David Solove uses a laptop, scanner and digital camera to produce an online diary of circus life that family and friends read to keep up with him.

All that remains of the turkey is its wishbone, and the pumpkin pie is a sweet memory. Aunt Stella is back on her diet, and Pops is hogging the recliner, sleeping through another football game. The teenage cousins wonder if they'll ever graduate from the "kids' table," and Mom is upstairs with a headache.

This is the perfect weekend to contemplate the "connectedness" of the American family.

Spending time with family can be a messy, stressful business, but still, most of us would rather be with our folks than without them. Unfortunately, our increasingly transient lives get in the way of togetherness. Conventional wisdom tells us our mobility, heavy work schedules and growing reliance on technology estrange us from our family. But there is growing evidence that just the opposite is true. More and more, families use technology to help them connect, and when they do, many report that technology is changing -- and often improving -- their relationships with one another.

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Not too long ago, David Solove was just another lonely clown crisscrossing the country on a circus train, pining for contact with friends and family, and waiting for his turn at the pay phone behind the "big top." Solove, head clown for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, has made his home for the past nine years in a compartment aboard the Ringling Bros. train. He has an ever-growing list of friends and family he has struggled to keep in touch with regularly. An avid diarist, Solove writes newsletters about his experiences on the road and sends mass mailings between shows. But it's been almost impossible for people to reach him. Although Ringling Bros. supplies a voice mailbox for his phone messages, he shares it with 17 other clowns. Two years ago, when the circus was in Las Vegas, Solove bought a cell phone, and it changed his life. "It is a godsend that people can reach me now," he says.

Now, in addition to the cell phone, Solove rides the rails equipped with a laptop, scanner and digital camera. His newsletter has morphed into an online diary of his life on the road, complete with photographs. His parents and brother, back home in Columbus, Ohio, regularly read Solove's diary on Ringling Bros.' Web site and call him on his cell phone. "We can talk to him whenever we need to, and we can experience these things with him now, no matter where he is," said his mother, Donna.

While cell phones, PCs and Internet access may once have been the exclusive domain of a few devoted tech-heads, recent studies by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press and the Pew Internet and American Life Project show that 53% of Americans now use cell phones, 67% use computers, and 55 million Americans use the Internet daily. The commercial benefits and convenience of this technology aside, more than half the people surveyed said exchanging e-mail with family members actually has improved their relationships.

Mary Lou and Christopher Doyle of Dunwoody, Ga., typify the newest generation and greatest growth area of techies: grandparents who want to keep in touch with their far-flung brood. The Doyles come from large families (each was born to a family with nine children) that have become fractured -- generationally and geographically. With three children, seven grandchildren and three generations of nieces and nephews (they estimate they have 130) spread across the country, the Doyles kept in touch mainly with their own children by mail and phone. Last year, when they started using e-mail from their home computer, their family circle grew.

"The technology has made things so much easier for us," Christopher Doyle says. "Our three sons all use it, so they're in touch more often. They e-mail us pictures of the grandkids, who live in Houston and Chicago. In fact, my son owes us pictures of our newest grandson, because we haven't seen him yet."

Like over half of those surveyed by Pew, Mary Lou Doyle says e-mailing has enhanced her relationships with her siblings and extended family. "My brother Donald, who's 77, went online about a year ago, and my goodness, he e-mails us just about every day. I've also been in touch with my grandniece in Alaska, and I never would have heard from her otherwise. In fact, she just e-mailed me a picture of an elk in her back yard. It was great!" The Doyle family is so large that they rarely all get together, but they are using e-mail to help coordinate their next family reunion. Says Mary Lou Doyle, "This is something we probably couldn't pull off otherwise. It would just be too big a job."

Eileen Olynciw, with laptop, and her sisters e-mail daily, though they all live in Waterford, Conn., and talk often.

Dedicated e-mail users often talk about the ease with which the technology lets them express the silly minutiae of their lives. Eileen Olynciw, a real estate agent in Waterford, Conn., sends and receives e-mail from her three sisters every morning -- even though they live in the same town and speak frequently. "We just share those little insignificant things that happen -- the things you wouldn't bother calling someone on the phone for," she says. Eileen got so interested in recording the daily events of her life that she has started "Web logging" -- recording a daily online journal on her own Web site. Her 16-year-old son, Mark, also keeps a Web log. "Our family is really close," he says, "but our logs are so of the moment -- we are keeping in touch with each other in a very current way." Eileen posts photos on the family Web site through Myfamily.com, and this has led to renewed relationships with her extended family, including a cousin in London with whom she hadn't spoken in 30 years. "Now I feel close to him. We visited him this summer, and it was wonderful," she says.

Ironically, technological advances might bring us more or less full circle, by helping to bring us face to face. As the price of the technology comes down, a growing number of people are moving beyond text-only e-mail by employing Web cameras and videoconferencing for their personal use. Stephanie Kivett, 32, works at a tech firm in Seattle and is perennially homesick for her family near Boston. Last year, she started to bridge the distance by installing Webcams on her family's home computer and her brother's college computer. Kivett's 16-year-old brother, Gavin, is a night owl, she says. "I'll notice he's online late at night and go on the Webcam and say, 'Hey, little brother, why aren't you in bed?!' The camera removes the distance between us."

Kivett's 12-year-old sister can show off her soccer trophy, and her brother showed her his dorm room by taking her on a Webcam tour. "There's something special about being able to see somebody's face and see what they're talking about. Then I don't feel like I'm missing everything," she says.

The abundance of technology has families reaching out in new ways, but sometimes what works is to use more familiar tools in a new way. Recently, a serious illness put Washington, D.C., lawyer Paul Miller in the hospital. Miller has a huge list of family, friends and colleagues, all concerned about his condition. He and wife Jenni set up an extra voice mailbox to field the many expressions of concern. They updated the outgoing message often so friends could call in for updates on Miller's condition. People could leave messages if they chose and know they weren't disturbing the family.

Miller says he really valued listening to people's voices, but his favorite form of communicating is still the old-fashioned kind: He loves to write and receive long letters -- the kind where correspondents actually put pen to paper, stick a stamp on it and send it through the mail.

Amy Dickinson is a writer in Washington, D.C.

Virtual Reunion

Armstrong, above, reflects on the online chat that reunited her with the son she gave up for adoption.

Fortunately, Armstrong's son, Fred, was looking for her, helped along by his supportive adoptive parents. Compassionate participants in an online chat room at Adoption.com helped Fred find first his maternal grandmother, then his mother. Appropriately for the times, mother and son first communicated via the Web in a private chat room. That first online meeting was a rush. "I'd waited all my life knowing I had a birth mother out there somewhere, but I didn't know where or how to find her," Fred says. "Once we met in the chat room, I wanted to get right to it: How did it happen? Where was I conceived? What happened to my birth father? Do I have any sisters and brothers?" One by one, Fred's questions were answered. An edited transcript of the end of that first tentative digital conversation reveals the almost unimaginable emotion of the moment, as mother and son struggle through years of questions and layers of feelings to come to an understanding of each other.

Fred: "How do I tell you in two hours what has happened in one lifetime? I'm sure you feel the same way. The feeling I have now is one of the best of my whole life."

Dee: "I want to call my daughter [Fred's half sister, Meredith]. I must prepare myself for the next big step: talking to you on the phone. We'll be OK, right? The toughest part is done."

Fred: "Yes, we'll be fine. I feel very comfortable now. The missing piece of the puzzle is now here. I am whole again."

Dee: "You have a whole life. We are blessed to have this added opportunity to enrich our lives. I hope I don't disappoint you anymore -- not ever."

Fred: "You never disappointed me in the first place. I understand why you put me up for adoption. You have nothing to regret. We are here today. And we will grow closer and closer in the days and months to come."

Armstrong says the emotion of the moment almost disabled her ability to type. "My husband told me that if I didn't stop crying all over the keyboard, it would short out," she says, laughing. That first conversation led to e-mails, phone calls and visits. Now Armstrong is the proud grandmother of Fred's baby daughter and has met her son's adoptive parents, whom she has thanked for rearing him. Their goal now is to find his birth father (Fred is the product of a brief romance Armstrong had as a teen). Armstrong describes this mother-and-son reunion as "a great roller-coaster ride," and neither can now imagine life without the other. They're thankful for the technology that enabled their reunion and the community of "virtual friends" who helped them along the way. "Without their help," Armstrong says, "this never would have happened."

-- Amy Dickinson

Photos by: RODGER MASTROIANNI (Solove); MARK FINKENSTAEDT; (Armstrong); GALE ZUCKER (Olynciw); all for USA WEEKEND