14th Post

When I was 9 years old, my family took our annual December holiday trip up into Canada, to spend Christmas and New Year's with our relatives. Due to black ice, and then car trouble, this particular drive up spread out over 3 days, rather than taking the usual 8 hours. We only ever made it to my grandparents' house because some good Samaritans loaned us their car - after picking us up once ours finally died, in the frigid wasteland my brother called "silo country" - and brought us to their house about an hour from the city. Can you imagine, they loaned us their car!

Anyway, we had a nice visit for the first several days, and then my Dad got a major flu, he was so sick that we stayed on longer than expected. So then we tried to leave, got an hour or so outside the city, and... the car died. Another few days to fix it, and finally we made the drive home.

For the whole trip, I kept saying to myself, "we'll get to Grandma's and then everything will be okay... Daddy will feel better, and then everything will be okay... we're on the road now, everything will be okay..." Eventually I gave up thinking like this, just went along for the ride. On the final drive home, I waited until we turned up our street - 30 seconds from our house - before saying, "okay, we're finally home, nothing can go wrong now!"

And do you know, we walked into our house to find the first floor and basement flooded because the heating pipes had frozen in our absence.

The lesson I learned from that trip and its' final insult was this: never tempt the fates.

So, imagine my concern yesterday when I finished up my post - and discovered that I've posted exactly 13 times! I simply could not let that stand, because I don't tempt the fates.

In my head, I know how stupid this must sound; how could my posting 13 times instead of 14 possibly have any influence on flying conditions, pilot competence, or weather? And yet, my heart knows that I have done all I could to ensure that tomorrow's flight goes smoothly, simply by writing this here 14th essay.

And so, knock on wood, I will get off the plane tomorrow night with my two awesome boys, give my husband a long, long hug, and head home. It's been a great trip, but it definitely feels like it has been too long since we've seen Daddy!