Comedy of Holy Errors, 1st Travel Day

The pilgrim's pride, 1st day of travel.

Treparations are all done. You sleep four hours, wake up full of adrenaline, turn on the Internet to check your bank balance, run to the donut shop for breakfast, come home, swallow your "breakfast", check your bags, make the bed, take a shower, get dressed, put the bags in the driveway ready for pick-up and you're ready to go. Whoa, not so fast there, big boy, where are your eye-glasses? Eye-glasses? Oh, right. Wow, that's why everything is so fuzzy. You run into the house and announce to the "Voice-in-the-Kitchen" that you can't find your glasses. "They're right there on the table." You go to the table. No eye-glasses. You go to every nook and cranny of the dwelling and you can't locate your glasses. You check the car, no glasses. Back to the house you go. Wife is now also frantic and turning every which way looking for those glasses. Prayers start to fly, beginning with, "God, what time is it?" "Ouch, only 45 more minutes before pick-up." "St. Anthony, I know it's early, but wake up, Holy Man." "Jesus lost and found, don't let him go to Jerusalem without his glasses!" "Mother Mary, calm me down. You do some of the looking for a minute or two while I take a sip of coffee." Now some important details are starting to set off bells in your head. Turn off the main water valve; pull all the small appliance plugs; lock the windows; check for the passports, the tickets, your wallet...Oh, where are your glasses. 15 more minutes to go. As you come into the house from turning off the water valve, there she is, glowing and saying "Thank you, Jesus Lost and Found" as she extends her dainty hand with your glasses in them. "Where did you get them?""In the hamper.""No, impossible""Possible" she says, "they must have fallen in when you threw something into the hamper and the clothes caught the glasses and dragged them into the laundry basket."
So off you go to the rendezvous point, glasses and all. You attend the Mass for the group. You receive the blessing of the priest and the congregation, gather around for a final send-off picture taking session and make your way to the waiting airporter shuttles. Picture taking? Camera? Pictures? Oh, no, don't tell me that I forgot my camera. HHHmmmmm, where oh where? Ah, I have a mental image now. This is not the disaster that I thought, it's in the carry-on bag in the trunk of the car. Phew! I'll exchange that bad feeling for the one I would have had if I had forgotten it at home.
Once seated, the conversation begins. One story after the other along the lines of the one above. The lost passports that were placed in a safe place that could not be forgotten, but could not be found because the "safe place" was the family Bible. The final itinerary with notes and comments that was laying on the floor at the threshhold of the wrong door.
Pilgrimages are holy travels, but they all start out about the same. The stories are all true, and at the time of the telling they are all humorous. They are like the opening prayer. Because the endings are all happy ones and because God's intervention was palpable, they tend to make everyone happy. They are like public confessions where human weakness is not an enemy because God and His Army are there to overcome it.Such was the beginning of our day, 9/13/2008, a day when Friday the 13th came on Wednesday, but it didn't really cause any harm because all of us were already in God's Land in spirit.
I am writing this on the airplane. A blessed airplane it is, too. It has God's name written in two languages on it's skin, EL AL. We are halfway to our destination. When we get there, with God's help, I'll tap into the mystery of the Internet and let you in on some of the excitement of the last few hours of preparation that are a part of every life just before a big adventure.