When I was a kid, every Sunday at 9 pm, my paternal grandfather, “Gramps” to me, would call our house. The 9 pm time was, by his explanation, when the long distance rates dropped. He would call from a rotary phone in his kitchen, which did not have a long enough cord to afford him or my grandmother to sit down while talking. He did eventually get a cordless phone. He was famously cheap about some things, but extravagant about others.

We continued the call through college, and then into my young adulthood and the earliest years of my marriage and fatherhood. In the waning months of his life, Rhonda and I took to calling him on Sunday nights instead, and we would chat until he would nod off during the call. “Take care,” he’d always sign off.

After we dropped Aaron off at college, the idea popped into my head: we should resume the tradition. Sure, we text during the week; I send him pictures of cars I see and other things around which our interests coalesce. We have the family chat and then our sidebar conversations.

But that’s not the same thing.

So we have that reserved space, that time when we chat after dinner, not worried about long-distance rates, using FaceTime over WiFi. The sound is amazing. I have to sneak off to the apartment upstairs or another room because it’s a three-way call between me, Aaron, and Rhonda, and our audio echos if we’re within earshot of each other. A three-way call with middle-aged parents seems cringey in its way, the stuff of a commercial or sitcom. I’m pleasantly surprised, however, at how long we all chat, often for an hour. Proximity has its charms, of course, but the distance inspires us to soak up the shared digital presence.

It’s a new spin on an old tradition. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.