Gratitude. The dictionary defines the word as “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness”.

It seems like such a simple act. Yet it has become almost rare to see and experience. As we celebrated Veterans’ Day this week, I hope all veterans felt appreciation from someone around them. If you are reading this and have served in the military or are currently serving, either foreign or domestic, war or peace - from the bottom of my heart…Thank You!

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Florida with my husband and a grandson to visit our granddaughter attending college at Florida Atlantic University. It was the first time flying, seeing palm trees, or stepping on a beach for our high school senior grandson. I am extremely grateful to have been blessed with the joy of experiencing that with him.

If you have heard any horror stories about airline travel recently, I am here to tell you they are true. If you have experienced that yourself, I feel your pain and am sorry.

We had been warned, and therefore arrived at the airport earlier than usual. I was glad we did. We started in Omaha, flew to Chicago, then on to West Palm Beach. The trip out was pretty uneventful. The lines at TSA in Omaha were not horrible - but we had a very early flight on a Thursday morning, which I think helped. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for our trip home on Sunday.

My first notification came about four hours before our scheduled departure that our flight was delayed by 20 minutes. No big deal. We were now set to depart at 6:48 p.m., so we arrived at the airport about 4 p.m.

In the meantime, I received another alert from American Airlines that our flight had been delayed again, but so far it was still allowing time to catch our connecting flight to Omaha. Then the hammer dropped. The message came that our flight was now scheduled for 11:30 p.m., not to Chicago, but to Dallas/ Fort Worth! And our connecting flight from there to Omaha wasn’t until 7 a.m. Monday.

Because we had gotten to the airport so early, we were able to get seats near our gate, as the small area quickly began to fill up with disgruntled passengers. Most of those were on different flights, which were also being delayed. Hoping to come up with an alternate plan I approached the American Airlines counter and found myself face-to-face with a lovely young lady who looked extremely frazzled. After asking how she could help me, she said, “Just give me the Reader's Digest condensed version.”

Before I did, I told her I was sorry she was having such a rough day and thanked her for being there. Then I gave her my story. She was able to put us on a standby list for an earlier flight to Dallas/Fort Worth and standby from there to Omaha. No guarantees, but there was hope.

It was now about 6:30 p.m., and the Dallas flight was nearly boarded, when we were called to the standby line. At this point, we had become very optimistic that we might get home yet that night. One of the airline workers began counting heads of those in the standby line and approached a couple with two children a short distance behind us and asked if the family was willing to be split up if they could not all get on board. I didn’t say anything at the time, hopeful it wouldn’t come to that, but I had already decided I would give up my spot if needed. My grandson later told me he had heard the conversation and had made the same decision.

About that time, the nice lady who had got us on the list came to our line saying, “Where are the Mortensens?” I raised my hand and she told me she could get us on the flight to Chicago that was just leaving with guaranteed seats from there to Omaha! We ran to that line while she feverishly entered our information into her computer and printed our boarding passes for both flights.

Meanwhile, the captain of that flight - which had been fully boarded for a few minutes by that point - came off the plane and told the workers they were ready to go. They literally held the plane for us! As we entered the walkway to the plane I stopped and grabbed the hand of the young lady and sincerely thanked her. She smiled and tapped my hand.

Of course, many of the people on that plane were not happy. They had been sitting for quite a while and thought we were the reason for their delay as we boarded. I understood their frustration - after all, they didn’t know any of what was happening behind the scenes.

We made it to Chicago, faced another short delay, waited quite some time on the tarmac for the plane to be de-iced, and finally landed in Omaha at 2:30 a.m. I took the opportunity to thank every flight attendant, captain, and airport worker I could along the way for being there and getting us safely to our destination.

Plans get altered. Life doesn’t always go the way we think it will or should. But there are always plenty of things to be grateful for.