A missed call and a voicemail from Axel popped up when I checked my phone on Sunday afternoon. Then a string of texts.

"On my way to airport now."

"Flight was cancelled. No explanation."

"I'm not coming home today."

I called Axel and spoke quietly. "You're not coming home? Little L is going to be so upset!"

The next two hours were a flurry of texts and phone calls. Axel had his parents on the case. "There's one at 1:30pm with one seat, connecting through LAX."

As in 1:30pm the next day.

For my part, I tried other airlines, even other airports.

Another text from his parents. "There's one leaving tomorrow morning at 6:30AM. Direct flight."

"Should I start looking for a hotel for you?" I asked Axel, talking through my earbuds as I heated up Little L's leftover quesadilla and rice and beans for dinner.

"I'm almost to the gate agent," he said. He'd been in line since I first talked to him hours earlier. "Let me just see what they say."

Meanwhile, Little L took her bath, narrating stories about her two Ariel barbies. We washed her hair and dried her off and got her into her pajamas. She was bouncing around, jumping and running through the house. Why wouldn't she be? After two weeks without Papa, he was headed home tonight.

"You'll be asleep but he'll come in and kiss you. And then you can see him in the morning before school," I had told her, back when I thought that was true. Before the airlines made a liar out of me.

We sat down at the kitchen table and she ate her leftovers while I ate a frozen burrito (I had heated it). I had come up with a number of solo-parenting hacks over the past two weeks: school lunch rather than packing a lunch, instant coffee rather than French press, and most importantly, takeout, cans of soup from the pantry, and frozen burritos.

I'll just wait until she's finished eating, I told myself. I didn't want it getting too close to bedtime; the upsetting news might make it hard for her to sleep. On her calendar there was a huge picture she'd drawn next to the word "PAPA!" on today's date. We had just gone out to buy him welcome-home flowers, and we'd planned on making avocado toast for his welcome home breakfast the next day.

My phone rang. I got up and went to get it.

"Okay, I'm on a flight at 11 tonight, flying to Chicago. And then I'm flying home from Chicago and will be home at 7:30am." I wrote down the information and tried to calculate if it would be possible for Little L and I to pick Axel up and then drop her off at school.

When I got off the phone, I texted the info to my in-laws. "If you can pick him up, that would be great." Part of me thought maybe the flight would get in early and they'd arrive in time for Axel to hug Little L before she got on the bus. But the teacher part of my brain knew that it was better to keep my trap closed and for Little L to have stability and routine in the morning and just see him after school. What adults sometimes think of as excitement and wonder actually just causes disruption and anxiety for kids.

"So, Papa called and said he's going to have to see you after school tomorrow instead of in the morning," I told Little L. "You know how they check the airplane before it takes off? They said that it needs to have a mechanic work on it, so they cancelled his flight." This information was probably not accurate, because "operations" issue doesn't necessarily mean mechanical issues, but again, I blame lack of information from the airline for me inadvertently lying to my kid.

"He got another flight, but he's going to have to stay up all night and fly overnight! He's going to take a flight to Chicago and then get on another flight to Minneapolis. He'll land around the time you're getting on the bus."

I paused and waited for the fallout.

"He won't sleep all night?" she asked, her eyes a little bit delighted at his plight. Our daughter likes to win. At anything.

"Yeah, you'll be all cozy in your bed getting so much rest, and he'll be riding around in an airplane, feeling so tired and uncomfortable!" If his sub-par sleeping accommodations were enough to get me out of this one, I'd take it.

"Awwwww," she said, hanging her head. "I wanted to see Papa."

"I know, hon," I said. "I'm disappointed too. It's disappointing."

I waited. But nothing happened.

"Maybe we can think of something to cheer ourselves up," I forged ahead. "To be kind to ourselves, since we're sad."

"Maybe we could eat cookies?" She perked up. I think the idea came from my coworker friend who baked cookies - which she shared with us - after a hard day last week.

"We finished all the cookies," I said. "What about some chocolate chips?"

"I know!" She jumped off her chair and pranced over to the pantry. She returned with a giant marshmallow for each of us. It was no chocolate, but you know, it did taste good.

"Mama, I'm going to make you a drawing to cheer you up," she said. She went over to her art table and got to work.

I didn't know what was going on. Seriously. Last week there was kicking and crying over asking her to hang up her jacket. Now Papa was delayed by a day and it was fine?

But you know, I'll take what I can get.

"You can make me a drawing to cheer me up too," she informed me, after delivering me a heart she had cut out, punched holes in, and put a ribbon through. "I'll start it for you." She wrote "For Little L, Love Carissa," at the top of a paper and handed it to me. I drew a rainbow, a cloud, a sun, and a unicorn.

Huh-huh, she giggled. "I'll make the unicorn's body," she said, when I said I didn't know what its body looked like.

We ended the night with some dancing and singing in the basement, using the karaoke machine Santa brought for Christmas. We took turns choosing: Let it Go, All of Us, Let it Go (single version), and What Else Can I Do?

By the time bedtime came, she seemed pretty cheery. She climbed in bed and I told her she'd get to see Axel the next day. She smiled and kissed the photo of him next to her bed.

I have to say, I was feeling pretty cheery myself when I crawled into my bed for one bonus night of watching Not Dead Yet. I had one episode left; this was perfect.

But when the phone rang, Axel himself did not seem cheery. He'd already been in the airport for six hours and his first flight wasn't leaving for another three.

"The gate agent didn't want to help me," he explained. "But some other passengers helped out."

It turns out his gate agent told him he'd have to wait until the following afternoon for a flight. But he had made friends with two women in line who were on the same cancelled flight to Minneapolis. They were trying to make it home in time for one of them to say goodbye to her dog, who was on its last legs. They were being helped by a different agent at the same time Axel was at the counter. Overhearing Axel saying he'd have to wait 24 hours for a flight, they came over and told him - and the agent - about the flight their more resourceful agent had found on a different airline. Axel's agent sighed - he was probably trying to follow protocol and book on his same airline - then got Axel booked on the same plane as the women. He didn't, however, print him a boarding pass, like the resourceful agent had. Or reserve him an actual seat.

"We were all kind of helping each other out," Axel told me the next day after he arrived home at 8:30am and headed straight for the shower. "I downloaded a map of the Chicago airport because it was going to be really tight for us to make our connection. I showed them the map and we strategized." They took the tram together but split ways when Axel had to try to get a seat assigned and ticket printed. Eventually, looking at the line, he opted to go through security without an assigned seat - you can do that now, because of Real ID.

"I got to the gate agent and they had a timer going - there were only five minutes left to board. When I told them I had a ticket but no seat, they didn't want to let me on. They were whispering to each other, I think because the only seat left was in first class. I really thought they were going to make me wait for another flight, and then one of them said, 'Oh, just give it to him.'"

I imagined Axel's new friends cheering when they saw him board the plane.

That afternoon, I got Little L off the bus and we walked home. Axel opened the front door, and she ran up the steps and gave him the hugest hug. She turned to me and said, "Finally!"

That night Axel made a video of Little L saying, "Thanks for helping to get my Papa home!" and sent it to his new friends. He heard back that the one friend had indeed made it in time to say goodbye to her beloved dog. It felt like a small victory that she'd made it in time, albeit for a sad event.

I told my brother about the three strangers working together to get all of them home in a medium-timely manner.

"Oh nice! That's a positive human interaction!" he replied.

Which is a nice spin to put on what was otherwise a very inconvenient day.