Mixed feelings

I'm writing this post tonight with mixed feelings; tomorrow is our 25th wedding anniversary, 25 short years, to be honest, but also tomorrow our son Odin leaves for North Dakota for a 1 year mission trip. He'll be staying at St. Michael's Church in Dunseith, which is a small town almost at the Canadian border. Looking on the map tonight we noticed that Dunseith is almost as far north as Fort Kent, Maine, which is well up there. He'll be taking the train out of Hartford, CT tomorrow morning at 6:26, and should be arriving in Pittsburgh later in the day. He'll spend a couple of days with friends in Steubenville where he went to college, and then on to Chicago and then to ND. If we don't get up there to see him or he doesn't get home for a visit, one year is a real long time to not see your son. I can't imagine if he would be in harms way somewhere, overseas. I really can't fathom that. I'll try to pray all the more for people in those situations. He's been home since he graduated in May and just couldn't find a job in his field. So now he'll be staying with Father Jeff, doing whatever has to be done, and getting paid $100.00 a month. No money, but he won't really need any, and the experience is everything. I'll really, really miss him, though.

Well, after we drop O off at the train station I'm taking the day off (vacation day #14, 1 left) and H and I are going on a small pilgrimage right here in our own backyard, so to speak. Tomorrow is also the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, and a friend of ours usually walks from his house in Stafford to St. Mary's Church in Hampden, MA, where there is a small shrine set up to honer Our Blessed Mother and the children. It's 13 miles one way, and Neil walks to and from, reciting the rosary the whole way. He told us he says about 200 decades on the trip. Neil is in his 60's and not that physically fit. Helen saw him last year, walking along the road, hair blowing crazy in the wind. She stopped and asked if he wanted a ride and that's when we found out about his solitary Walk to Mary. We decided this year to join him but at the last second he couldn't get the day off from work. So I think we're going anyway, just the two of us. Rain in the morning, maybe we'll wait until after lunch, we'll see. I'm really looking forward to it and Helen, well, like she says, "You decide," so I did. We go.

Right now I'm up waiting for our daughter to return home from driving a friend of hers back to Plymouth St in New Hampshire. Three hours up, three back. She should be here around 1:00am. I wasn't too happy with this decision of hers, but I probably also would have done it for a friend, and H would have, too. So here I sit, writing an overlong post. Sorry about that. If you stopped reading this long ago, I don't blame you. Peace to you all.