It never happened to us before. I had it in my head that we were taking the Red Eye from Oakland the way we always do. It leaves around 10:00 p.m. and gets us into Brooklyn by 7 in the morning.

But this time, my husband booked the flight and forgot that we were going at 3:30 p.m. As we  were getting ready to go to the airport for the 10:00 p.m. flight, my husband checked the computer for our "e-tickets" and…

…"Omigod, we missed our flight," he screamed. After he finished blaming me for the mistake: "Why did you act so sure about it being the red eye?" he yelIed, I called Jet Blue and told them what happened. "A missed flight is a forfeited ticket, you know," the woman on the phone said. "But I’ll see what I can do."

She put me on hold and while I waited (listening to Joni Mitchell on the hold-music: They paved paradise and put up a parking lot With a pink hotel...) I felt a kind of desperation. I was so eager to get back to Brooklyn to see my newly adopted niece, Ducky. I have never wanted to go home so badly.

The woman on the phone said that the  Red Eye that we thought we had tickets for was sold out. "I want to go home," I weeped holding the receiver away from my mouth. Then she said that there were seats on the Red Eye from San Jose. I got hopeful for a second. But there was a catch: it would cost $200 extra per ticket, which seemed a bit steep More panic. "I want to go home. It felt like the worldwide conspiracy to prevent me from seeing my niece.

Finally, for a small fee, the woman from Jet Blue was able to get us on the 8:50 a.m. on Wednesday morning. I was like Dorothy talking to the Wizard of Oz. I would’ve taken a hot air balloon all the way to Park Slope if I could.

Everything went perfectly after that. We actually found a great sushi place in a Tracy mall. We watched "Some Like it Hot" and went to bed. It was a windfall of extra time on the farm for my husband, which he actually appreciated. And there was an unbelievably star-filled sky.

We got to the airport at 7:30 a.m. without a hitch. Our seats were excellent:  row 2 (just like first class except Jet Blue doesn’t have first class).  Every seat on a Jet Blue plane has a television with something like 30 channels. I watched reports about Hurricane Katrina all day; I couldn’t turn it off. Here  I was so happy to be returning home and hundreds of thousands of people can’t go home…

So tragic, so unfair, so sad. Watching people rowing boats across their city is positively surreal.

Once home, we brought our suitcases upstairs, showered and ran to see Ducky, what we’d all been waiting for.

Elation. Joy. Fun. Love.