A miracle of modern technology

I emailed a quick message to my daughter this morning and she responded within five minutes. No big deal except she's deployed right now and half way around the world. It's so good to live in a time when I can know, in real time, that all is well with her. I think about my mom and dad, during WWII, mailing letters back and forth. I'm sure they were thrilled to get each other's letters and I've been mailing letters to my daughter but immediate contact is so reassuring. I do know that there were telephones back then, but cost and complications limited phone calls to real emergencies. I happened to be at my dad's house when he received a collect call (remember those?) from my brother, who, as far as we knew, was in  Vietnam. My dad's first response to the "Will you accept a collect call from your son?" was "From where?" I'm not saying my dad wasn't a loving father, he was, but he never quite got over thinking that long distance calls were really expensive.  Turns out my brother was calling from a hospital in Pennsylvania. He had been sent home from Vietnam with a broken ankle suffered when he, an MP, was trying to break up a bar brawl.  Sorry about the ankle, which still gives him problems, but so glad to have him home from that war. Meanwhile my daughter isn't in a battle situation but I'll be every bit as glad when she gets home.  This is her third and, I devoutly hope, her last deployment.