It's been almost a year. A loooooooong year since any new words have traversed this page. I am not pleased with that nor should you be. So much has happened, is happening and this writer, at least, seems to have misplaced his pen. Eleven months of marriage, a little baby boy on his precious way into my life, a new embarkation in a place long neglected. What happened? Why the web based ghost town with tumbleweed accessories? The truth is I lost my motivation. I don't remember in what day or hour it happened, only for months I never ventured to sit and pen my story. It sounds the proverbial sob tale but I no longer believed it mattered whether words escaped my mind and "graced" this page. I need to, want to begin again. This writer needs to write. It had become such a part of the joy of the journey and it can't now fade away.

I'm not now about to attempt a recap of all. Not on day one when the movement of the digits upon the keys is still fresh. No, I'll start with a magazine. An upturned magazine on a ragged dusty malodorous train seat. A train bound for the Slovenian border from the small northern Italian town of Treviso. Earlier in the day, I prayed for a sign. Any sign at all to remind this weary husband the road he travels is not an aimless one. Something to say, "Son, I still remember you." The rapture of it. I should have shook the hand and kissed the cheek of each of those Italian faces surrounding me. "That thing laying there is not just a magazine. It is my magazine, my sign." Why did I not roar it out? Even before I turn it over, I know it's for me. It's the US edition and it's laying in the exact place that I have chosen to sit. Where does one find American magazines laying upside down aboard Italian trains? In off-season no less and in a country where English is so tenderly and maliciously loved. Give the swarthy fat green bearded lads (leprechauns) their pot o' gold any day because this treasure is all I need.

No doubt the blessed reader now begins to despair of this writer's sanity but please read on and all might be understood. We are traveling to Slovenia. Ruth is five months pregnant. The hows, whys, whens, wheres, and even the sodding whos are pounding upon my skull with ever increasing fervor. We left Poland behind as it seemed all previously opened doors there are suddenly shut tight. We are off. A new adventure. A new place. The stakes now much higher. The endless travel gig is no option. We seek now our place and we seek it fast. In all the travels of these past years, apart from Poland, only one other place sticks out amidst the crowd. One other place where many a friendship has blossomed and a great appreciation of environment was birthed within me. That little place is where we are now headed. Cute quaint Slovenia with its minute population, wealth of greenery and shrubbery, and an attitude that seems to prefer the joys of village life to the exhaustive pace of the city. Until three years ago, I think I had never known of this place. Now my wife and I and the little monster (who has taken it upon himself to rearrange Ruth's insides in a curiously clinical way) are sitting in a train bound for it with visions of new life upon the brow.

So now, back to that magazine. What part does that have to play? Well, when weary God-following husbands haul their rapidly expanding (Ruth is currently pondering exploding as result of babs's growing pace) families across the world in search of home, any a "coincidental" sign from above is a real treat to behold. I woke this morning praying that something that day would let me know I wasn't a crazy awful tyrant to be subjecting Wonderful Wife and Malice-Inspired-Intestine-Kicker to this journey. Now here it is. For half the duration of the train ride, "In Style" (can't be choosy) mag is perched betwixt my fingertips. Wife and I and babs-in-belly sit contentedly pondering its contents, infrequently the outside scenery, and not at all the mass of word being bullet-ed out by neighboring train riders. He, big He that dwells inside our hearts, is coming along too and left the little parchment to make sure we knew so. It's nice to know that even in His eternal constancy there is no impatience with our need to be reminded of it.