Does Distance Make the Heart Grow Fonder?

   I've been MIA for a few days and I apologize. I have a hard time blogging about personal stuff. I have tried to work on it, but it has been a slow process for me. And this week the deeply personal stuff knocked me on my butt.

 The Mr. left Sunday morning for a business trip. If you actually count 3 AM as morning? I DO NOT! Anyway, we are an hour away from the airport so he had to go early to get through security and all that.. I thought I was looking forward to him being gone, us having some time apart, but the minute I closed the door after he left, I burst out crying. I went back to our room and just cried some more. He sent me some messages as he made his way through the process and let me know the flight was on time. I watch and photograph planes flying over our house all the time. Our house is under one of the main flight paths out of that airport so I went outside and waited and watched. I watched the sun coming up through the fog. Almost on cue I could hear a plane flying over, going the direction I knew he'd be going. However I couldn't see it to get a photograph because clouds moved in and were covering everything. At the sound of that plane, I burst into tears... again. I had to get back into the house. Something inside hurt SO bad. You see it has not been one of the best years for us. To be honest I was to the point of trying to decide if we were truly meant to be or if what we had once had was gone or run it's course. We have not been communicating very well and it was stressing us both. I have felt pure despair for some time now.

     We have been together since the night we met on the school bus.. He was a drummer in the Band and I was the Aid. It was my job to help the Flag Girls with their outfits and to also lay out and change out flags and props throughout the routine while the band was on the field I had been doing this since school started, nearly a full month, and somehow we had not yet met. But on that particular night, it was raining and the band director would not let the band off the bus because we had band competition the next morning and he didn't want the uniforms to get messed up. So we were all just talking, playing word games, etc. I was at the back of the bus with the flag girls and a friend started calling out to me from the middle of the bus. I made my way up there and she introduced us. He had heard me laugh above the roar of the crowd and wanted to meet me! Looking back, it was incredibly brave of him to even ask her to introduce us because he was the most shy person! He had only had one other "girlfriend" before and it was on of those innocent things most of us encounter in the early times of high school. Where you say you are boyfriend and girlfriend but don't really see each other outside of school. To add to that, I was an outsider. I had moved from the west to the south only five months earlier. I looked different, dressed different and certainly talked different. Once we were introduced, we didn't stop talking all evening! And we have been together every since. Less than two weeks after I knew him, I knew we would be married some day. He later told me that he had felt the same thing, also less than two weeks after we met. We got married five years to the day that we met. I have to say, on the whole it has been good. We were ONE. We made it through those first years, squabbles with family, moving several times, even infertility treatments and money troubles. Through it all  I knew I could count on him and I tried my best to be the same for him. I didn't ever want to disappoint him. so to be in a place where we could barely speak to each other has been foreign territory. Painful territory. We have only been apart like two other times since we met.. and it was me that went away. So like I  said, I thought I would be glad for him to be gone for a bit to give us both some breathing room, give us both time to think.... I was wrong. I miss him. I miss him BAD!

I love good old pen and paper and wrote him some little notes for him to open each day that he would be gone, but I gotta say, thank goodness for technology! We have been able to talk on the phone and we have a program on each of our laptops so he can take pictures with his phone then uploads them to my laptop so me and the little guy can look at them. The same program also allows us to chat. So last night I couldn't sleep and left him a message. As my own little olive branch I signed with "love you". I woke up this morning to see a message from him and the sentence "I hope you know I love you too", You guessed it... I cried... AGAIN! My heart has felt so much lighter today! If there had been a way to get to him, me and the little guy would have been there waiting for him. Even as I'm a romantic, I'm also a realist. I know problems don't just magically disappear. But they seem smaller now, something more manageable. The trip was a good thing. Long distance has brought us back together. Emotionally if not yet physically. All I know is I feel HOPE.  I can't wait to put my arms around my husband again! The very thought brings tears to my eyes..... AGAIN! :)

Morning Glory the morning The Mr. left for his trip