To celebrate Christmas with my family, my husband Joe and I recently traveled with our 2-year-old daughter, Lily, to my father’s home in North Carolina. 

Joe and I have done this for many years now, and we’re accustomed to being met by mild temps and sunshine upon getting off the plane. It never dawned on us to check the weather forecast before leaving Michigan this year. Aren’t there already enough details to worry about during the holidays? 

But the snow stopped that night, so with our fingers crossed, we arrived at the airport 90 minutes before our 12:30 p.m. flight. Asheville’s airport is small, so we thought that as long as the weather held, we’d be in good shape. But the kiosks wouldn’t let us check in, and we had to join a slow, serpentine line-up of anxious passengers who were all waiting for the help of the one person working the counter. Before we knew it, 12:10 p.m. arrived, and we still weren’t even at the front of the line.

“I can’t believe this,” I said to Joe. “Our plane’s here, and we’re here, but we can’t check in and get to our plane.”

Amazingly, though, Lily just rolled with the punches, nudging forward in line as we occasionally moved our truckload of luggage, and playing with the two castoff Barbies that my sister’s kids had given her during our stay. Lily had the two Barbies giving each other loud, smacking kisses repeatedly and got obsessed with the idea of them each giving the other shoulder rides.

When we finally reached the counter, we learned our plane hadn’t even landed yet, so it wasn’t on time (the person whose job it was to update the arrivals and departures monitors hadn’t come in to work, which was a running theme). We couldn’t check our bags, inexplicably, but the airline rep said we could take everything through security and try to check them plane-side. (Logistically a pain in the tuckus, sure, but what of it? We now had new hope regarding making it home.)

Naturally, we were a complete nightmare at security, with three suitcases, a bulky car seat, a diaper bag and a big backpack with a laptop, let alone getting our coats and shoes off and bagging up liquid items. When we finally arrived at the gate, we learned it wasn’t necessarily our gate and that no one really knew where or when our plane would be arriving.

But it was lunchtime, and we were starving, so Joe sat among our small skyline of luggage on the floor (because no seats were available), and Lily and I went to forage for food. A little snack stand was our only option, and it had already been gutted by other hungry travelers, so there wasn’t much to choose from. But we found just enough, including a sad-looking ham and cheese sandwich, to feed us all.

The three of us sat on the airport floor, as much out of the walkway as we could manage, and ate our depressing little lunch. But Lily seemed happy as a clam. She played with a rod-and-bead setup nearby, and, when our gate was finally announced, she trotted around rows of empty seats while singing “A Spoonful of Sugar” — like we were in the airport version of Disneyworld.

Eventually, our plane landed, and they let us board. But then we heard that the airport was so understaffed that we’d be waiting a while to get our fuel, as well as to get the plane de-iced. Lily just curled up contentedly in her seat to watch bits of “Mary Poppins” and “Madagascar” on my laptop.

Yes, we had to drag a crazy amount of heavy luggage a mile across Metro airport when we landed in Detroit. But somehow, we got home. And as I told Joe later, the biggest wonder of the day was how Lily’s behavior buoyed her parents’ spirits and provided both of us with more patience by far than we ever would have otherwise had.

I’m sure this is partly because keeping tabs on our cheerful little girl forced us to focus on something beyond our immediate, frustrating circumstances. Having a child, without question, complicates all aspects of your life, and had Lily been in a foul, uncooperative mood on this day, things would have been far worse by a longshot. 

But sometimes, your child is the very balm you need while navigating through the brambles.

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. To read more, check out her An Adequate Mom blog at http://www.anadequatemom.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.