Mom on the Run: Summer means it’s text messaging season

Lianne Wilkens/Columnist
Published: June 22, 2008

It's 8:29 a.m. when my cell phone rings. My daughter's name flashes on the screen. I answer, surprised she's up so early, and, "Mom? Do we have cooking oats and buttermilk?" Uh …

"Buttermilk, no. I only buy that as needed. Oats, probably. Look in the baking supplies cabi-net to the left of the sink." "OK, thanks!"

"What are you making?"

"Apple-oatmeal pancakes. I found a recipe online." I direct her to Belva's rec-ipe hiding in our old Good Housekeeping cookbook, which I know she's trying to replicate and which I think doesn't need buttermilk.

I hang up and work. Until my phone buzzes at 9:32 a.m. "Where is baking powder?" she has texted. Hmm. That took her a while. "Red can bottom shelf in cabinet to right of fridge" I pick back.

All is quiet until 11:03 a.m., a full hour and a half, when I get another text: "Hey today is the semi-annual sale at victoria's secret … we should go tonight " "Remember we have dinner at coxes," I peck back. "After?" "Maybe." "Mkay " she writes back.

And so it goes, off and on all day. My 16-year-old texts about how her friend Liz might go with us to the mall and the sale. Then she texts that Liz might not be able to go, she's never driven that far before. She tells me when she and her boyfriend are at the grocery store, and texts again to say they're at home watching General Hospital.

We text back and forth about cash for camp and her plans for the rest of the week, before she goes out of town. Her text messages come in spurts, as she has ideas and questions and sends them my way … and I respond to her spurts, slowly hunting and pecking out the answers on the tiny cell phone keys.

In between, I'm also texting with her brother. He lets me know when he and Andrew leave to go to lunch. He texts me to let me know they have arrived at lunch, and again when they leave, and finally when they get back to Andrew's house. He calls to ask what time dinner is going to be and what we're having.

By the time I leave work, I have received 22 text messages and sent 25, and received four phone calls. I have talked one kid through an independent cooking adventure and hopefully taught the location of key ingredients, and tracked the other on a semi-independent lunch adventure, hope-fully impressing upon him the need to check in frequently and to keep his phone on him at all times.

Finally, walking out to my car at the end of my work day, I am surprised by the cool in the air and the gray in the skies. It's hard to imagine that it's summer vacation, it doesn't feel like summer, plus this school year went by like a flash. Has it been a year already, that it's summer again? Then my phone buzzes, another text from a teenager! My gosh!, and I realize: Oh, yeah, it's summer, all right!

Lianne Wilkens lives with her family in Manassas. She can be reached at .