an Announcement

Dear Friends,

I have a very exciting Announcement!

At least, I think it's very exciting.  I am positively giddy about it.

With a growing interest in and love for photography, the opening of my Etsy shop (more items coming soon!), and a deepening enjoyment of writing, I have been feeling little pin-pricks of change in the air.

When I started On the Way back in 2008 (wow, just three years?), I didn't know what blogging was, what the blog world was like, and what a balm it would be for me to share my thoughts and questions so openly, and to hear your comments and answers and feel your support.  It's been a wonderful trip, laughing and smiling and sparkling together, on the way.

But now, we're continuing the journey on a slightly different road, and I would like to invite you all to join me.

Please, come.

I will keep this blog active in case you want to re-visit old posts, but all future posts will be over in my new home.

I hope you like it :)

love,
anne

Traveling..

Today I am flying to California to see my family. My WHOLE family. Except for baby girl.. She has to stay on this coast. My flight was delayed 15 minutes, so I took the extra time to wander the terminal a bit, knowing I would be sitting for six hours.  I'm not worried about the time.  Jetblue tends to arrive earlier than scheduled, and I know my husband will be waiting for me.

I went to use the rest room as a preemptive measure (who really likes making all your row mates get up just so you can piddle?) and as I entered, there was a lovely woman sitting on the floor by the sink, crying.  A woman who was wearing her own baby in a carrier was taking to the woman on the floor, who was pumping (to keep up her milk supply).

So Much More

It was so much more than simply saying goodbye to my husband for a few days, or a week, or several.  It was more than knowing I would be facing an empty house coming home from work, or going to bed alone every night.

Hugging Taylor goodbye at the airport on Sunday was the concrete realization that so much that we have hoped for has, thus far, been withheld.  It was saying goodbye to the hope we fostered for so long, even after March 21, of taking our baby girl home with us soon.  It was saying goodbye to long summer days at the lake house, introducing her sweet face to all our family and friends, bringing her to church, to weddings, baptizing her, becoming a family at last.  A long last.

One Thousand

With my head perched on the sill of my bedroom window, I hear birds in neighboring trees through my wire-grid screen.  When I focus closely, every part of the world fits into neat little boxes.  Everything lines up with the coarse wire lines keeping the bugs out.  But when I fix my eyes far away, the lines become blurred; faint outlines of the little pixels that make up the picture of the larger world.

Lightning strikes. I count the seconds until I hear the thunder. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand.  I count to eleven. The storm is not far off.  This weather is oppressive and, even without my chest cold, I find breathing wearisome.  Won't the storm come? Won't the clouds release their torrents and rid me of this weight on my chest, this weight on my mind.

One one thousand, two one thousand. Three. Four...  Seven.  It is getting closer.

Today is six months.  Six months ago today a little girl was born and named after my husband and me.