The Christmas Miracle

Christmas travel is always more hectic than traveling the rest of the year, so we decided to schedule our flight to visit Dave’s Mom in San Diego, California a few extra days before Christmas.   We typically travel light to avoid checking bags but with this being Christmas we had a few extra items, so packed a larger bag.  Dave’s Mom lives in a small duplex with a tiny kitchen.  I’d baked sugar cookies ahead of time and packed their in a bin to take with us to decorate with her Christmas Eve.   We also had a few presents, Christmas stockings and nicer cloths for Christmas Eve service.  As usual, we arrived at the airport early, due to mechanical troubles on the previous plane, we had to wait an extra half hour for our flight to leave.  Our flight seemed uneventful until the flight attendants announced that we were diverting our plan to Las Vegas, Nevada.  They were running low on fuel circling San Diego’s airport waiting for the fog to dissipate.  When we landed in Vegas the fight attendant announced that our flight had been canceled.   

The soonest flight we could get out of Las Vegas in the direction of San Diego was just after 2:00 pm the next day arriving in Los Angeles, California.  From there we’d need to take an Amtrak to San Diego, shuttle busses to the Coaster train, then yet another Uber to get to Dave’s Mom’s place.  We decided to rent a car and drive to San Diego rather than waiting for another flight.  Before heading to the car rental pickup, we stopped by the baggage claim and learned that our bag of Christmas joy hadn’t been unloaded from the plane, we’d need to pick up our back in San Diego.

We picked up our rental car and headed to Primm Valley, Nevada to spend the night since it was so late listening to “I Saw Grandma Kissing Santa Claus” streamed over YouTube through the car speakers.  When we arrived in Primm, “Whiskey Pete’s” was closed so we headed for the casino across the way.  It was practically empty; the place felt a bit like a ghost town and smelled of stale smoke.  There wasn’t anywhere to get a bite to eat other than McDonalds or chips from the vending machine.  We opted for the chips.  All of our toiletries and much of our clothing was in the missing bag.  We made the best of it.

Earlier this week I downloaded Pricilla Shirer’s “The Resolution for Women” and began listening to it on my way to visit my Mom and brother.  The first of her resolutions is to make a commitment to contentment.   I kept thinking that irregardless of whether our bag made it to us before Christmas that the most important part of Christmas was for us to be together, and I was confident that we’d make it to Dave’s Mom in time for Christmas.

 

Early, the following morning, we grabbed coffee and breakfast at McDonald’s and headed out.  I took this photo on the way into Barstow, California.  We arrived into San Diego just before 1:00 pm, before the flight to Los Angeles would have taken off.  We still needed to return the car to the car rental and retrieve our checked bag.   We weren’t sure what plane our luggage was on so we decided to wait until traffic around the airport might calm down.

Somehow, out of a huge pile of luggage from canceled and misdirected planes, Dave was able to spy our wayward Christmas bag.  He called me on the phone from the airport so excited and told me that we’d received a “Christmas miracle”.    Dave doesn’t throw the “miracle” word around lightly, so I knew he was seriously amazed to have retrieved our bag.  On the way to the airport to pick up our bag, he’d been certain it was a lost cause but was going to give it a good “college try” anyway and told himself he’d fill out a missing bag report should he get there and not find it.  He seriously didn’t expect to find our bag given all of the delayed and canceled flights throughout the country.