~and a promise is just that~

     When you look at it on the map, the journey from my home here in south-western Colorado back to my home in south-central Kansas doesn't really look all that bad.  If it were not for those things called the Rocky Mountains and two or three canyon lands, it would pretty much be a straight shot from here.  It is only a mile from our house in Montrose to Highway 50 and that same road takes us right back to Reno County, Kansas.  All the way.  Even over Monarch Mountain and the pass there.  It was one of the first things that Mike told me before I made my first visit out here, now nearly two years ago.  

"Just get on 50 Highway at South Hutch and head straight to the west.  You can't miss it," Mike told me.  And he was right.

     The time is coming close at hand when we will get to go back to have a Christmas celebration in Kansas with our family and friends.  One week from today, just about mid-morning we should see the sign that I love the best in the whole wide world.  It was the sign where I took my picture with our friend Norman this past summer as he made it to the Sunflower State on his cross country trek to raise awareness of childhood cancer.  He had walked a lifetime of footsteps by that hot and humid July morning.  Mike and I were fortunate to catch up with him on the road and cover five miles with him that day.

     The days have passed so quickly and boy does it ever seem like just yesterday that we turned the calendar over to the first day of December.  There is much to do here before we take out but everything will come together just fine I am positive.  It's a sure thing that some serious packing and planning will be going on today.  

     We have begun to watch the weather for the mountains and the long journey to cross over the Continental Divide.  So far, so good.  It appears as though we will have a "window" of opportunity to cross over on the 19th sometime about 6 p.m. or so.  Of course that can and does "change on the proverbial dime" here making nothing a certain thing.  We will watch and wait in the next few days to see how the storms that make their way through this part of the country in wintertime actually play out.  Thankfully for this trip back we have a couple of days of "wiggle room" in our schedule.  Usually that luxury is not ours.  

     When I moved away over a year and a half ago, I left a lifetime of memories behind me.  People and places that were so familiar to me then are missed by me now.  I long to see the ordinary stuff like Smith's Market on South Main Street or the ETC. Shop just a few blocks to the north of it.  I want to hear the laughter of my family's voices as we sit around the Christmas Day dinner table at my sister-in-law's house in Haven.  This "mother's heart" wants to see her children and to be with them once again.  There's a twenty dollar bill stashed in hiding here to be used for buying some great tea over in Wichita at the Spice Merchant and a hundred other things on our "hope to do" list before our time is over and we head back home to Colorado.  It promises to be a great visit and a time for rest, renewal, and relaxation.

     And even in as much as I want to go home again, the strangest of things will more than likely happen to me as the days in Kansas pass by.  Sooner or later, as our vacation time winds down to the end, I will feel myself needing to return here to the life that I have made in a state that I never thought I would visit let alone live in.  Up the road a ways about ten miles are so, there is this place that I call my "home" during the school year.  It is filled with so many fine folks, good people who have become my friends and new family.  In a busy and sometimes very noisy classroom, there are 22 little people whom I love very much.  They need me to come back to be their teacher and I promised them that I would.  

And a promise is just that.  A promise.

Seven sleeps more.  See you back there soon dear Kansas.