Easter Miracle

I needed a miracle. This week I flew home from Hong Kong to visit my family in Manitoba for Easter. I was traveling alone since my husband Dave had left for North America ten days earlier. He picked up our son from his home in Ottawa and the two of them went to different locations in the United States to watch college basketball games.  I arrived at the Hong Kong airport at 11 am in plenty of time to make my 1 pm flight to Vancouver. At the check in counter a kind attendant informed me my plane had left at one o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been.  I should have remembered plane departure times are always listed using the twenty- four clock. I had read the time incorrectly and missed my flight!

    The airline had another flight that afternoon at 16:45 that I could take and only pay a small penalty fee. Otherwise I would need to buy a whole new ticket that would cost thousands of dollars. The bad news was the 16:45 flight was fully booked and ten people were on the stand-by list ahead of me. I’d need a miracle to get on that plane.  In tears I called my husband on my mobile phone. He was in Boston Massachusetts. He calmed me down and said I should try to get on the 16:45 flight. If I failed to do so we’d figure something out. I spent several anxious hours waiting and reported to the airline desk an hour before the flight. I was told there was exactly one seat left on the plane and I could have it, if during the next half hour no other passengers showed up. 15 minutes later they checked my suitcase and gave me a boarding pass. Then I had to wait another nerve wracking 15 minutes. I spent the whole time praying fervently and finally the attendant gave me the go ahead. I set off running to clear security and get to my gate on time. I got on the plane but kept imagining at any minute the stewardess would approach me with a late passenger in tow and ask me to leave.

           When we began to taxi I breathed a sigh of relief and using my mobile phone called my husband, Dave in Boston. It was the middle of night there and he had not slept a wink, waiting to hear from me. The stewardess came to ask me to put away my phone so I said good-bye to Dave who immediately got on our son’s lap top computer in Boston to rearrange a new connecting flight from Vancouver to Winnipeg for me. When I arrived in Vancouver thirteen hours later I opened my laptop computer and Dave had sent me a new electronic ticket for my flight to Winnipeg. He had also phoned my sister in Winnipeg to tell her she needn’t go to the airport to pick me up till the following day. I used the text -messaging feature on my mobile phone to let my youngest son in Winnipeg know our dinner date for that evening would need to be postponed. I opened the Facebook account on my computer and saw my daughter-in-law in Ottawa had sent me a ‘good luck’ message. Our son had phoned her from Boston to tell her about my missed flight and she had been sending positive thoughts my way.

       The next evening I was sitting in front of the fireplace in my sister’s Winnipeg living room sipping a glass of wine and recounting my exciting travel adventures of the last 48 hours.  I realized as I told my sister the story, how modern technology had played a vital role in untangling my crisis. Portable computers and telephones had brought our family members in Winnipeg, Ottawa, Hong Kong and Boston together. I will however not discount the fact that divine intervention may have been as vital a factor in the happy resolution of my ‘travel disaster’ as modern technology. Thanks to my own Easter miracle I am now in sunny Manitoba and having a wonderful time!