Closely knit families are the recipients of many more pluses than the getting-on-your-nerves and too-close-for-comfort minuses would suggest. Our family is closely knit to the second power. Although fourth generation American, it still resembles an "old world" paradigm – grandparents spending Sundays with us from church through dinner, aunts and uncles visiting for all birthdays and holidays, and cousins hopping aboard like siblings for vacations. There's an inescapable animus of sharing, caring and giving. As one would expect, recipes, shopping bargains and repair advice are exchanged as freely as hugs, and variations on the family history provide a base for debate, drama and near-death duels. But underlying it all is our citadel – unity. There is physical evidence of this in our demographics – almost all members of the extended family currently live within fifty miles of the original homestead. . .until now.

In May, our oldest graduated from college, and on June 1 he began the first day of his professional life. . .over one thousand miles to the south in Georgia. Our oldest daughter just completed her first year of college – 400 miles away from home in southern Illinois. We will see very little of her this summer and even less of her next school year with the pending reality of study abroad and an internship scheduled for the following summer. My wife and I look at each other and then at our in-resident seventh grader, realizing what only our eyes express – things are changing. Neither of us quantum leaps to "Will we ever know our grandchildren?" but most clearly we sense autumn's chill in the air. In spite of this, however, we have found a regimen to fight this change in seasons that's as healing as the warmth of what we in Wisconsin call Indian Summer.

Although our family history had taught us differently, we discovered that unity is more of an intangible that a physical dynamic. Certainly we know that there's always the telephone, pictures and email and that planes, trains and automobiles really work. But as a group, we worked out two tips for remaining close in spite of great distances.

• The first is as old as modern commerce – the post. Both children tell me that email and calls are great, but there's a degree of emotional closeness that only the effort and personality wrapped in a letter can provide.

• Our other tip is much more up-to-speed in its adaptation of technology. As a family, we have all agreed on an identical time to pause during the day and think of each other, and we have all set our watch alarms to this moment. Daily, then, and for this one moment across the miles, we are a family – together again and comforted by the magic of our timely reminder.

Try both – the process is fun and the feeling. . .nothing short of unifying.

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