Australia

Deciding to have a baby is like planning a trip to Australia. You’ve heard it’s a wonderful place, you’ve read many guidebooks and feel certain you’re ready to go. Everyone you know has traveled there by plane. They say it can be a turbulent flight with occasional rough landings, but you can look forward to being pampered on the trip.

So you go to the airport and ask the ticket agent for a ticket to Australia. All around you, excited people are boarding planes for Australia. It seems there is no seat for you; you’ll have to wait for the next flight. Impatient, but anticipating a wonderful trip, you wait--and wait--and wait. Flights to Australia continue to come and go. People say silly things like, "Relax. You’ll get on a flight soon." Other people actually get on a plane and then cancel their trip, to which you cry, "It’s not fair!"

After a long time the ticket agent tells you, "I’m sorry, we’re not going to be able to get you on a plane to Australia. Perhaps you should think about going by boat."

"By BOAT!" you say. "Going by boat will take a very long time and it costs a great deal of money. I really had my heart set on going by plane." So you go home and think about not going to Australia at all. You wonder if Australia will be as beautiful if you approach it by sea rather than air. But you have long dreamed of this wonderful place, and finally you decide to travel by boat.

It is a long trip, many months over many rough seas. No one pampers you. You wonder if you will ever see Australia. Meanwhile, your friends have flown back and forth to Australia two or three more times, marveling about each trip.

Then one glorious day, the boat docks in Australia. It is more exquisite than you ever imagined, and the beauty is magnified by your long days at sea. You have made many wonderful friends during your voyage, and you find yourself comparing stories with others who also traveled by sea rather then by air.

People continue to fly to Australia as often as they like, but you are about to travel only once, perhaps twice. Some say things like, "Oh, be glad you didn’t fly. My flight was horrible; traveling by sea is so easy."

You will always wonder what it would have been like to fly to Australia. Still, you know God blessed you with a special appreciation of Australia, and the beauty of Australia is not in the way you get there, but in the place itself.

Diane Armitage printed in the April 21, 1995 "Dear Abby" column

For Kiki

This is my niece Kayla, or Kiki as I have been calling her lately. She used to hate that name and we used to call her it more as a joke but she seems to like it now. She usually calls me Crazy Angie. This was taken a couple of years ago when she was about 3. She came over for the afternoon and we swam and did her hair. She was very proud of it and now begs me to do her hair whenever she is over. Isn't she beautiful?

Right now she is very curious about the birds that make their nests in the eaves of our house. We usually have a conversation about them each time she comes over; why they like to live in nests, how they make them, what they eat, why they eat bugs, and do they eat bugs even for breakfast? It always amazes me how much she thinks about these things. She loves to run races with me, thinks its hilarious to sneek up and spank me and runs screaming towards me every time we see one another. I love it.

I can barely speak about this.

I know, I know, soooo sad. And now Mike D'Antoni, I have been mourning.