Summer Holidays? Expect the Unexpected

Summer Holidays? Expect the Unexpected

Nobody plans to loose their car keys while on holidays in Martha’s Vineyard, especially when you are 500 miles away from home. I will never forget the summer that my family traveled from Toronto, Canada to New York City and Martha’s Vineyard for a summer holiday. We traveled by car, hoping to keep our expenses down. 

We made one very big mistake.We traveled with one set of car keys. Boy did we pay the price!

Can you imagine being in Edgartown and finding that somehow the only key that has mysteriously disappeared from your set of keys is the key to your ignition? Imagine, after making dozens of international phone calls from your cell, on the only sunny day you’ve been there, that the keys to your car have a security code and a computer chip. This means to have another key made, you will have to have your car towed from Martha’s Vineyard to a car dealership in Fairhaven and that meant getting your car on a boat.

 Have you ever tried to book a trip same day to get on a very busy ferry for a family of four and a disabled vehicle, only to realize that your luggage is still back at the hotel?

To top it all off, we learned that because we didn’t have a key, we couldn’t put it into neutral or steer the vehicle. AAA said it couldn’t be towed. This meant more phone calls to the American and Canadian Mazda help line. Turns out we had to find a locksmith on Martha’s Vineyard with experience in car chips and security codes that just happened to be available at that moment in time. Frustrations mounted when we learned that a tow truck couldn’t take all four of us to the ferry. We would need a taxi to pick up the luggage from the hotel.

Now I want you to imagine driving through Martha’s Vineyard traffic on a changeover weekend with your kids in one car and your husband and the tow truck in another.

Expenses started to pile up, one on top of another, the locksmith, the international telephone calls, the cab rides, (the taxi ride from Woods Hole to Fairhaven is not cheap). Paying for accommodations in Martha’s Vineyard, when you are forced to stay in Fairhaven, while you are waiting for the Mazda dealership to open up, isn’t cheap. I really thought I was going to loose my mind, so many little things were just going wrong.

That’s only part of the story. The second half of the story involves the goodness and care that we experienced from complete total strangers. It also involved dozens of graces, consolations and delightful moments amidst the chaos.

There were many folks who helped us throughout this ordeal.

First there was the gentleman, the lawyer type, who spent hours in the scorching sun making phone calls for us. Then there was the elderly gentleman who combed every inch of the area where we lost our key. Then of course there was the locksmith who drove right across the island in rush hour traffic – so he could help us. 

Probably the most memorable was the man in the Mazda dealership John Mederios, who heard about the accumulation of all our expenses and decided that he would pick up the tab for a three day car rental. That’s right, out of pure compassion, though not obliged he helped a stranger in need. He lived by the “pay it forward” principle.

The three or four days we spend trying to solve this dilemma did give me reason to raise my eye brows a bit – the folks we had met at a weekday mass wished us luck and offered no help at all. A priest listened to our story in a very business like fashion, but offered no help.  Where we expected help, none came, but it did come -- it came in droves.

Despite all of the problems we had during this trip, there were many gifts, many graces.

One of the most powerful gifts in that whole experience was observing the care, love, tenacity of my husband and the patience, acceptance, helpfulness displayed by my preteen kids. It was also gift to see how we as a family worked under pressure. I fell in love with my family all over again. All too often, I forget how much I love them and on this vacation, I renewed my convictions  love for family life. It really is full of wonder.

I also came to appreciate the grace of a smooth day. Every single day, hundreds of things go right and I hardly ever notice it. I never think to thank God for all the little things that go right every single day. More often than not my days are totally predicated on the assumption that things will go smoothly. There are so many little things I depend on; my alarm clock, my coffee maker, my telephone, my computer and yes, my keys! Up until this vacation, I took the grace of a smooth day very much for granted. At one point during this fiasco when I thought we had come face to face with what felt like a curse, I decided to call a girlfriend in Toronto, just to talk this thing out. It was there then that I realized that all the friends, family, associates and professional contacts I had back in Toronto were really treasured gifts. I began to see how easy it was to take them all for granted.

A couple of days of chaos turned out to be a bit of a retreat, with many lessons fortified.

To this day, I still think about that holiday and especially the service manager at Mazda, John Medeiros. During our  many conversations at the dealership, I learned that he is a fallen away Catholic. Turns out I met him at the Mazda Dealership in “ Fairhaven ” on the Feast of the Assumption. We were planning to be at the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge that day, as Providence would have it, I had the opportunity to talk to a fallen away Catholic about many different aspects of faith instead.

When I got home, I ordered a ten year enrollment mass card, for John and his deceased father (who was a devout Catholic) from the Association of Marian Helpers in thanksgiving for his goodness and generosity. I pray that our chance encounter with him will bring him to the shrine one day.

How was my summer holiday? Truly extraordinary! As my daughter so cleverly remarked, “Mom, look at how many people we met because of one simple key!” It really was an adventure we will never forget.

If you are going on holiday's, please do remember your second set of keys. If you ever come across  someone that needs help, remember every little bit counts! A little bit of help often goes a very long way.