Our son Seth has not slept in the same bed for more than three nights since early June. He has been traveling cheaply in South and Central America, Mexico, Bermuda, Barbados, Puerto Rico and the U.S., blogging about it as The New York Times Frugal Traveler.

It doesn't seem very long ago that I vowed that Seth would never cross the street alone. I have gotten used to his crossing the street and more, but I still miss him every day.

However, it's not as bad as it sounds. Email has been a blessing. Although he has not always been within internet range, most of the time I know I can reach him online. Thanks to Skype, I can even "see" him when he calls from remote locations around the world.

And now, there's Twitter. Just a few words that let me (and his followers) know what he is up to. I get daily emails from a service that alerts me when he has posted a tweet.

We hadn't heard anything from him for way too long when Thursday morning Nutshell Mail alerted me to a new tweet. Sure enough, "Back in NYC after accomplishing the near-impossible: 6 days, 6 nights in Los Angeles without setting foot into a car."

Big sigh of relief, thanks to Twitter.