My Nest Is Empty.

A very modest request

I suspect there has been a slight misunderstanding regarding our recent discussion about the one-minute video per day.

For roughly 20 years now, we have diligently invested in cultivating two fine young gentlemen. We have invested an extraordinary amount of time, energy, love, worry, patience, and effort into making sure that you are ready for the world and, most importantly, equipped to build happy and fulfilling lives.

Recently, we made one very modest request: that you devote approximately one minute of each day to your aging parents, sitting alone in the dark, far, far away, wondering what has become of their children.

The people behind the parents

To be clear, this is not a reciprocal arrangement. We are not required to send you a one-minute video in exchange. We are not your children. You are our children. For most of the last two decades, a huge part of the meaning and rhythm of our lives has revolved around raising you, caring for you, talking to you, worrying about you, and generally wrapping you up with as much goodness as we could.

And now you are out in the world, living your own lives—as you should be—and we are adjusting to the rather large hole this leaves behind. That hole can be made considerably smaller by the simple pleasure of seeing your beautiful faces and hearing you talk to us for sixty seconds each day.

The ordinary days count

Now, if you find that your daily minute is becoming repetitive or monotonous—if you feel you have nothing new to report and that life has become a loop, like a little mouse running endlessly on a wheel—then perhaps the exercise is providing you with an unexpected bonus: a moment of daily self-reflection. If every day sounds exactly like the day before, perhaps that is a sign to go do something interesting, try something new, meet someone, explore somewhere, or otherwise add a little variety to your life. So you see, the one-minute video is not merely an act of kindness toward your parents. It may actually contribute to your personal development. Yet another service we provide.

So, from this point forward, we expect considerably improved adherence to the One-Minute-a-Day Program.

The tether remains

It costs you sixty seconds. It means far more than sixty seconds to us.

The tether that once ran directly from your mother’s umbilical cord to you may now stretch all the way to New York, but it is still there. We miss you. We love you enormously. And seeing and hearing you for one minute each day makes that distance feel just a little bit shorter.