I love Skype.

In our household, it is enabling us to establish a relationship with someone who doesn’t quite know us yet, but we sense that she’s beginning to understand who those folks are on the other end of image in her parents’ cell phone.

We are relying on Skype to communicate with little Emma Nicole, our granddaughter, who lives about 360 miles southeast of us, way over yonder in Allen, one of the many ‘burbs surrounding Dallas.

I must stipulate that we’re not yet very good at initiating Skype contact, but we’re quite good at receiving Skype messages from our son, daughter-in-law and little Emma.

We visited with them Tuesday evening. According to our son, Emma “wanted to wish me a happy birthday.” It’s kind of strange that when he says it that way, it sounds quite believable.

Look, she just turned 9 months old. So, intellectually I know better, but my heart wants to believe she really does communicate these things to her parents.

We connected the Skype hookup Tuesday evening and looked right at our little angel. She looked right back at us and, so help me Almighty God in heaven, we are certain she recognized us. She began waving. We waved back and we had a heck of a great time talking to her.

She chattered back to us in that code known only by babies as they utter it.

My friends keep asking me about grandparenthood. How do you like it? Is it as much fun as you would expect it to be?

I am candid in answering that. I don’t yet really know. We haven’t gotten to do too much of it, given that Emma lives so far away. We’ve seen her a few times, held her, cuddled and kissed her and told her we love her. Then we have to come back home, and start longing for the next visit.

Still, because of Skype, Emma is able to see images of her grandmother and me and is getting to know the sound of our voices.

Therein lies the reason I believe Skype has become be the best technology ever developed in the Internet Age.

Oh man, life is so-o-o-o-o good.