We were looking forward to a week of family simchas in late
December. My niece Miri Rosenbaum’s chasuna
would take place in Baltimore on Tuesday night, December 28. On Wednesday, we
had the wedding of my husband’s niece in Lakewood. Thursday was the bar mitzvah
brunch of a nephew, with the niece’s sheva
brachos in the evening. We were going to stay in Lakewood through Shabbos sheva brachos. Since all these simchas
involved close family, we planned to take our children with us and had
reservations to fly from Ft. Lauderdale to Baltimore at 7:21 Monday evening.
As we got to the airport, I
noticed the news media there but didn’t pay attention. We went through security
and got to the gate. At 6:38, as we were getting ready to board, there was an
announcement that the flight was canceled. They gave no reason. (I found out
later that thousands of flights were canceled that night due to COVID-caused
staff shortages.) What should we do?
I said, “Let’s get in the car and
drive!” While my husband went to get the car from the lot, I tried to find out
if there was a later flight. After waiting on a long line, I was told that
there were no more flights that night. That confirmed our decision: The only
thing to do was to drive. We stocked up on food at the kosher store, went home to
get pillows and blankets – and we left.
It was a rough drive. We traveled
through the night with all the kids, who were uncomfortable. By 3:00 a.m., my
husband couldn’t do any more, and I took over until 7:00. We traveled all the
next day – 19 hours of driving, total – and got into Baltimore at 4 p.m. We were
exhausted and hoped to take naps, but we had no time for naps. We had to quickly get ready and go straight to wedding.
The wedding was beautiful, b”H, and the next morning, we drove to
Lakewood (which took only three
hours, a bracha!). That night, we
attended our niece’s wedding, also beautiful. The next day, the bar mitzvah
brunch was beautiful, too. And so was the sheva
brachos. We got a lot done before the Shabbos in Lakewood. We took our
daughter to a seminary interview in Boro Park, and we got hats and a tefilin bag for our soon-to-be-bar mitzva son.
* * *
Our return flight was departing
from Newark at around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday night. But we had the
car, and someone needed to drive the
car back. We decided that the kids would fly, and my husband and I would drive. We took
them to the airport and waited in the cell phone parking lot until they boarded
the plane because a lot of flights were still being canceled. Then we drove to
Baltimore, planning to get up early Monday morning and start our drive. We knew
that snow was predicted, but we thought it was not a big deal. My husband is
from Toronto and knows how to drive in the snow, and we thought they would be cleaning
the major highways.
We got going Monday morning. It
had snowed overnight, and it kept snowing. It was snow, snow, and more snow. It
was a lot. We realized this was not normal snow. I said, maybe we should get
off. My husband agreed, and we got off at the first exit we could. The exit was
one lane with a light at the end. We were the first car at the red light. It turned
green, and our car would not go. We tried reversing, turning left and right. The
car was stuck in the snow. It didn’t have a grip. In the meantime, all the cars
were behind us; the light turned red and green and red again. We couldn’t move.
Two men came and pushed our car. They got us out, and we were able to go, but
the road off the highway was worse than the highway itself. We realized that it was safer to stay on the highway. Back on the highway, we saw cars
getting stuck in the snow left and
right. We were slipping and sliding. We thought that we should try to get off again because the conditions on
the highway were dangerous. We got
off at an exit and tried to go into a mall parking lot, but it was up a hill. Our car was not able to make it up the hill into the parking lot so we
had to reverse back down to the road. We decided that the highway was the
safest place to be and got back on. We tried a total of three times to get off at an exit, but the roads were horrible
off the highway, and we were forced to
stay on.
After a while, the snow stopped
and the sun came out. As the snow melted, puddles of water, like potholes, formed
next to the piles of snow in the lanes. Traffic was slowed to three miles per
hour. We kept starting and stopping, and every time we stopped, our tires got stuck in the pothole-like puddles. People got out of their cars to help and
direct us. At one point, I
actually got out on the I-95 and
tried to push the car. (Having been raised in Miami, I had no experience
driving in snow and was afraid to be at the wheel.) It was really scary because
we had no control over the car.
We saw many cars stuck in the snow all
over the place. We were constantly
saying tehilim. There was one particular pasuk that we kept repeating over and over: “Ad haina azarunu rachamecha v’lo azavunu chasadecha v’al titsheinu
Hashem Elokeinu lanetazch.”
We realized we had to get off, but we didn’t know if we’d be
able to make it. It took us two hours to get to the next exit. In the
whole day of traveling, we had gone just 60 miles and had 70 miles worth of gas
left. We later found out that six
tractor trailers had turned over and the 95 was completely closed.
* * *
We finally got off the exit at
Stafford, Virginia. Leaving the exit, we saw cars stranded all over. We saw
signs for hotels and headed for the Holiday Inn. We slipped and slid and finally made it into a parking spot in the hotel parking lot and went inside.
What a relief. But the clerk told us there was no occupancy. No occupancy?! We
started to make phone calls to other hotels in the area. They were all full. People
kept coming into the lobby and just hanging out there with no place to go. We
didn’t know what to do. We called Chabad. The rabbi answered and said that aside from the fact that a tree
had fallen and blocked his car, he
would have to get on the 95 to come and get us, which wasn’t possible. We asked
him if there were any shuls or frum
people in the neighborhood, and he told us there were no frum people in the area whatsoever, no
shul – nothing.
We didn’t know where to go. We
called my sister and brother-in-law in Baltimore, Aryeh and Shira Berkowitz. Amazingly,
Aryeh found an Airbnb within a few minutes drive from where we were and booked
it. Great! We went to our car only to find that it was stuck in the parking
spot. We tried for a long time to get it out, but it wouldn’t budge. Aryeh said,
“It’s a 25-minute walk. Do you think you could walk it?”
Aryeh texted us how to walk there by foot. Then I called my daughter in
Miami and told her to call everyone on both sides of the family and ask them to
say tehilim for us that we should be
able to make it to the Airbnb. We took some clothes and food from the car and
started to walk. The snow was 12 or 14 inches deep. I was wearing regular open shoes,
wedges. Living in Florida, I don’t even own a pair of boots. This was not like regular
walking. Your foot sinks in, all the
snow falls into your shoes, and then you have to pull it out. It was
more like climbing. My feet started to feel really, really cold and were
sopping wet. My shoes were falling off, and I had to keep putting them back on.
Finally, I took them off and walked in the street in stockinged feet.
By now my toes were so numb I
couldn’t feel them. I said to my husband, “I’m in so much pain. I can’t feel my
feet!”
He said, “Look, there’s a Ross up
ahead! We’ll go and get you boots. Keep going.”
I started to cry. “I can’t do this. I’m not going to make it.” My
feet were completely numb. The “25-minute walk” was obviously in the
summertime. A guy in a pickup truck slowed and asked us if we wanted a ride. I
wanted to go with him, but we were afraid. We didn’t know who he was, so we
said no and kept going.
I looked to the left. The
Shopper’s was closer than Ross. “I’m going there,” I said. As we approached the
store, I saw a man with his back towards us. As I got closer, I saw a yarmulke on his head. I screamed. I
couldn’t believe I saw a yarmulke! My husband was so shocked to see a yarmulke
that the only words he could get out of
his mouth were, “Yarmulke, yarmulke, yarmulke!” The man turned around.
He turned out to be a meshulach from
Eretz Yisrael who was driving from Baltimore to Miami to collect. I cried to him and told him our story and
asked him if he could take us to the Airbnb. He said he would talk to
his partner. Meanwhile, I went into Shopper’s to try to warm my feet. The two meshulachim agreed to take us. It was supposed to be a three-minute drive.
We got into their car. I was crying from the pain. The “three-minute” drive was
hard as the car kept slipping and sliding, but we got there. We were so
thankful.
“When you come to Miami, come to
us; we’ll take care of you,” we said to our saviors. Meanwhile, in our rush to get inside, we did not
give them our names, address, phone number – nothing.
* * *
As soon as we were inside the Airbnb and starting to warm
up, I thought how it was a nes (miracle) that Aryeh found the Airbnb – that it
was even available when every hotel was full. It was a nes that Hashem put two Jews in the Shopper’s parking lot in a town
where there were absolutely no frum Jews.
I truly felt like Hashem sent Eliyahu
Hanavi to help us. I really think it was the tehilim that our whole family said that saved us. That walk would have taken us an hour to get
there in the gear and conditions that I was walking in.
The host was very nice, another chesed from Hashem. We had enough food
for that day. We took showers and went to sleep. On Tuesday morning, our goal
was to get the car. We were low on food, too. Another chesed: We found packets of instant oatmeal in the Airbnb – and
they were kosher! The microwave was too dirty to clean and kasher, so we turned on the hot water from shower and
added it to the oatmeal. That was our breakfast.
We learned that the government was
coming to help people on the highway. Most people were stuck for 24 hours in
their cars. (A friend of ours later told us that her friend was in the car all
night long with kids and only chocolate to eat. They turned on the car every
hour for a little heat, trying to
preserve the gas. There were no bathrooms. What a nightmare.) We were
lucky to have gotten off and that we were warm and safe. We decided that my
husband would walk to get some food and to try to get our car out since I
didn’t have any shoes, while I said tehillim for him. He got to the
car, but it was still stuck. A man came along with a shovel, and they got the
car out, only to have it get stuck again on a sheet of ice on the road of the hotel’s parking lot,
which obstructed cars from coming and going. They got a group of guys to push
the car back into the parking spot. We
were back to square one with the car.
Unable to drive the car, my
husband walked to Target, where he bought some food and boots for me. I was
telling the story to our host, and she offered to pick him up from Target as
the main roads were fine. She said that the next day she would drive us to the
car and bring a shovel with a
pick to break up the ice, a gas container, and a blanket for traction.
“By the way,” she said, “do you
want to stay another night?” She had something called “instant booking,” and
someone else had booked it for tonight. Now we were worried again about where
we would stay. Outside our room, we heard a woman
crying in our host’s home. She was supposed to have come on Wednesday, but she
was stranded and came early. She was crying, “Take me in. I’ll pay you double.”
Our host took her into a bedroom
in her own house, another chesed. So
now we knew we had a place; we would not be outside in the cold. The next day,
Wednesday, our host would take us to the car. Hopefully, we would get the car
out and leave.
* * *
We were calling our kids all
along. They were home alone with our older daughter. Their flight had come in
Sunday night, at midnight, and another family that was on the flight drove them
home: another instance of hashgacha
pratis (divine providence).
We started to think about the next
day. I have a friend who lives in Savanna, eight hours away from where we were.
I called and asked her if we could come and stay overnight if we managed to
drive out on Wednesday. She said yes.
We got up on Wednesday morning. We
had to wait for our host to finish her meeting at work. After her meeting at 10:00 a.m., she would take us to our car with
the shovel, pick, gas can, and blanket. We waited and waited. It was 11:00, and
she was still at the meeting. At 11:15 a.m.
she finally arrived. This was another hashgacha pratis. Because the meeting ran late, the sun had melted
the snow around our car. When we got to the Holiday Inn, the parking lot had
emptied out. There was no car in front of ours, and we simply pulled forward.
We didn’t need the shovel, pick, gas can, or blanket. We couldn’t believe it!
We were so excited!
We had hardly any gas left because
of all the stops and starts. We got on a long line for gas and filled up. We
knew that the tires were bald from all the churning in the snow. What do we do
now? The highway was open but there were still icy patches. We didn’t want to drive anywhere with road
conditions like that and bald tires.
My brother-in-law Aryeh suggested the autotrain. We started to drive 23 minutes north to get to the train station. The
trip would have cost around
$800, but we were desperate. Aryeh
tried to book us tickets, but there were no tickets available until Monday.
The whole area was overflowing with stranded people who had the same idea.
Once again, we didn’t know what to
do. We pulled over at the first gas station we saw. I said to my husband,
“Look, there’s an automotive store next door.” They did not do tires, they
said, but directed us to a tire place right next to them. This place had our tires in stock. We got new tires
and an oil change. Another nes. We
were on our way!
We drove eight hours and arrived
in Savanna a little after 10
p.m. My friend and her husband gave us a wonderful welcome, with a hot meal. It
felt so good to be taken care of. The next morning, we were on our way again.
We got home on Thursday, a little after 5 p.m. We could not believe that we
made it home. We were filled with thanks to Hashem.
Now for the amazing finale to our
story: On motza’ei Shabbos, my husband
returned from father-and-son learning with our son and saw a man walking up our
driveway. It was the meshulach! The
one who had given us the ride! We had not given him our name, phone number, or
address – yet here he was. Needless to say, we gave him a very large donation.
He said, “I don’t want to be paid for the chesed,”
but we explained that it was for his institution. And we found out who he was.
It was the son of Rabbi Meir Schuster, the man at the Kosel, who did so much kiruv and chesed for so many years.
* * *
In the days and weeks after our
ordeal, we began to realize the many nissim
(miracles) and hashgacha we had experienced.
1) The kids were able to fly home and were not in the car or on the street
during those many difficult
hours on the highway. 2) The
kids got a ride home from the airport. 3) We did not run out of gas and were
able to exit the highway. 4) Our brother-in-law found us an Airbnb. 5) It was
available. 6) We found the meshulachim, and
they took us to the Airbnb. 7) The oatmeal at the Airbnb was kosher. 8) The
hostess drove us back and forth. 9) Her meeting ran late, so the sun did all
the work for us. 10) The first place we stopped sold tires and had ours in
stock. 11) And last but not least, we arrived safely to our home.
Chasdei Hashem ki lo samnu, ki lo chalu rachamav!
