Happy Christmas Flying or Off the Track

Since the weather has become snowy and blowy once again this holiday, travelers can relate to the following:
I remember Christmas in my hometown, how I could feel a cold coming on, but I didn't admit it to my husband. I said I was fine. I packed up my daughter to make the plane trip. That was the time the plane, or rather, the pilot decided never to land.
I was looking to land in Madison, near our town in southern Wisconsin, but it was at that point, the pilot made an announcement that he would have to move on to LaCrosse, since the runway was too slippery. Upon arrival at the LaCrosse Airport, the pilot announced that conditions for landing were, again, too slippery; next stop was Minneapolis!
My little daughter was resourceful; I had asked a guy name, Pete, what to do and started following him around. So being the nice fellow he was, my daughter began placing him in a position of "guide". We must not lose track of Pete. He would help us. He would lead us. He would make all things right.
Now, when you're a mom with a little girl, and you've planned on landing in southern Wisconsin only to land in northern Minnesota, you feel something short of desperate.
You get your brother on the pay phone, because cell phones had not yet been invented. A stranger has seen your tears and promised to put you up for the night, even though you've declined, because now, you're wiser than a single age twenty-two embarking on Chicago.
But brother advises you to hold back your tears for the sake of affecting your child and making her apprehensive. He assures you that the reason the pilots chose not to land is that they're smart.
Moments are lost in memory, but somehow, we got back to our original destination My mom shouted out, smiling, "Look at her", meaning my daughter, toddling along.
I embraced a sister-in-law. Later, her son and my daughter played "Tricky Track" and cheered each time the train fell off the track, which is not the object of the game.
The snow was high. Relatives were glad to see me, especially the advising brother, with a lot fuller, darker beard and head of hair than he has now.
The head cold did not get any better. In fact; it got worse. But I kept plugging along just so I could see my people and bring our kids together in the farm and cheese state in which we were all raised. Okay, I wouldn't be surprised if Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone was actually our town.
It was worth it, so when my daughter replayed the series of events for my husband on a little pink, plastic car upon her return home,(which became a plane and her, a pilot, in her imagination) she said, "On our way to Grandma's house, no; we're not going to land there. We're going to land in LaCrosse; no, we're not going to land there either. We're going to...Minneapolis!"
These are the kinds of things we love to store in our memories.