Sean’s flight was supposed to be on Monday, December 27th. That morning, he texted me.

“My flight’s been canceled. I scheduled another flight for Thursday.”

I was disappointed, but not surprised. For the past couple of days, I’d been crossing fingers, lighting candles and bajando las ánimas de mi tía Macaria in hopes that Sean would be able to get out of New York despite a blizzard. But the weather didn’t cooperate.

Sean grumbled that he felt like he had been running a marathon only to find out the finish line had been moved. I just accepted it and hoped there would be no issues a few days later.

The next day, most of his boxes arrived via FedEx. I shoved the heaviest in to the closets and joked that he should’ve shipped himself in one of those boxes.

I kept myself busy that week doing work from home (or trying to) and running when it wasn’t raining.

Thursday came and there were issues. Of course there were. Sean’s brother was got caught in traffic and was late to pick him up. Sean would have missed his flight, but it was delayed. That meant he was about to miss his connecting flight, but that one was held. He made it to LAX that evening, 20 minutes after originally planned.

I was there with a sign welcoming him home.