I landed in Chicago at 6:15 p.m., with an hour layover before I needed to catch my puddle jumper to South Bend, but the flight wasn’t on the electronic reader board. When I checked at the desk, I found out it had been canceled for weather-related reasons. That sounded ominous. When I’d told Mammi I was coming to visit her, she’d said to hurry and to bring my warmest coat, scarf, gloves, and boots. I checked my weather app for Nappanee. Twenty-three degrees with snowflakes.
The next flight wasn’t for another twelve hours. I left a message on Mammi’s machine, housed in the shed at the end of her lane. I hated the thought of her walking to check the messages once she realized I was late. It would be dark, cold, and snowy. I called her brother, Seth, who lived a mile away from her. He was Mennonite and had a phone in his kitchen.
He answered on the second ring. When I explained the situation, he asked, “Want me to come get you?”
“Definitely not, Uncle Seth,” I answered. He drove a 1975 Chevy pickup. I didn’t like the thought of him driving it into town, let alone to Chicago, more than one hundred miles away.
“I can pick you up at the airport tomorrow,” he said.
“I’m going to rent a car in South Bend,” I answered.
He didn’t argue with me. Instead he said, “Make sure and get one with four-wheel drive. Another storm is blowing in tonight.”
“All right.” I dreaded driving in the snow, which was why I wasn’t trying to rent a car in Chicago. The shorter the distance I had to go, the better. “I’ll call you if the flight is delayed again. Otherwise, would you tell Mammi I’ll arrive tomorrow? It’ll probably be in the afternoon.”
“Jah,” Uncle Seth replied. “I’ll drive over right now and let her know.”
“Denki,” I said. Uncle Seth might be Mennonite, but he still spoke Pennsylvania Dutch, a language I learned during the summer months I spent with Mammi Mast while I was growing up. I still spoke Pennsylvania Dutch with Mammi over the phone because I wanted to retain as much of it as possible.
I got something to eat and then settled down in a corner of the airport to watch movies on my laptop, to do all I could to pass the time and not think about Ryan. Of course, I wasn’t successful.
After dozing on and off throughout the night, I woke to find out that the next flight to South Bend had been canceled too. “You can take the bus,” the airline representative told me. “The terminal is across the street.”
I had to go to the bowels of the airport to request my bag, then wrestle it out of the airport and to the bus terminal. It looked like there was a bus that could take me directly to Nappanee.
I changed my mind about Uncle Seth driving into town—he probably did it all the time, anyway—and gave him a call, asking if he could pick me up at the grocery store that doubled as a bus station at eight that evening.
He quickly agreed. “I’ll let your grandmother know,” he said. “She was worried about you flying in a blizzard. She’ll feel better about you being on the bus.”
After waiting most of the day, charging my phone as I did, I finally boarded the bus just before four. I dozed with my head against the cold glass window, waking up every now and then to a flat, wintery world with more snow coming down. The landscape couldn’t be more different from the mountains of Northern California. The woods in Indiana, which were really just patches of trees at the back of fields, were nothing like the forests I was used to.
The plows seemed to be staying ahead of the bus, until we reached Elkhart County. By then, the snow was coming down in buckets, and the bus slowed significantly. I shivered at the thought of Uncle Seth waiting in his old pickup for me. He was in good shape, but I still hated he was out in the cold. All for me.
Finally, the bus reached the outskirts of Nappanee just as my phone rang. It was the florist. I answered it with the cheeriest hello I could muster. “Hey, sorry to bother you,” she said. “But Ryan’s card was declined.”
I groaned.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Can you call Ryan?” I said. “You should have his number.”
“I can do that,” she said. “But if I can’t get a hold of him, I’ll have to run the other card on file, which is yours.”
“Could you hold off on that?” I asked. “I’m sure he’ll take care of it.”
“I’ll give him a call and see what he says,” she answered.
I hung up with a sick feeling. Hopefully it was just a glitch. Ryan had to take care of it like he said he would. I would need the money I’d put away to relocate, not pay for the wedding he canceled.
The driver swung the bus into the parking lot of the grocery store. Just as I expected, Uncle Seth sat in his pickup. He left the engine running as he climbed out. He wore a heavy coat, a stocking cap over his white hair, thick gloves, and work boots.
I stepped off the bus and retrieved my bag from the driver. Uncle Seth took it from me, despite my protests, and swung it into the bed of the truck as if it were weightless. I was too tired to talk much, but I managed to ask about his family.
His seven children, forty-plus grandchildren, and eighteen great-grandchildren were all doing fine, apparently. Delores, his oldest daughter, was still working as a midwife. Years ago, she and I used to talk business.
“She has her office on my property now,” he said. “It got to be too much for her to make
