Eva is on her way back from France today and her flight should be landing in Chicago any minute. She has a four hour lay over, will clear customs and then catch her connecting flight to San Francisco later this afternoon. She was gone six weeks, had a whirlwind trip, visited the Eiffel Tower twice, saw the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, traveled to Versailles and then to Spain for the final two weeks of the trip.

She almost didn’t make it home.

Yesterday, around 3pm, she sent a frantic Facebook message telling us she was out of money and did not have the funds to purchase a train ticket from Barcelona back to France for her flight home. Oy.  (How she let this happen and did not keep track of her expenses is an issue I will address with her when she returns.)

I was frantic. Wiring money would not get there in time. Her father is the one who handles adding money to her TravelEx card, but he was unavailable for three hours with his cell phone turned off, watching a play.(Twelfth Night at Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Go see it!) I learned that the only way to add “instant” money to TravelEx card was to drive to San Jose, usually a 30 minute drive from our house, to the TravelEx store in the mall to add the funds in person. I finally reached her dad at 5:45 and he drove, frantically, through beach traffic, and arrived at the store just as it was closing. He convinced them to reopen the store for him and he was able to add the money. Whew! What a dad.

My heart just started beating again.