On our Christmas holiday trip to Arkansas last week, Bea and I sat near the front of the planes and had a chance to people-watch as the passengers on each full flight filed on. If you’d been searching for a word to describe us all, genteel would not have sprung to your lips. Our togs and manners were probably better suited to attendance at a high school basketball game. Accustomed as I’ve become to shuffling past first-class passengers who almost invariably avert their eyes, I try instead to catch eyes and offer a cheery remark or compliment (“Love the purple hair!” or “Your default expression seems to be a smile. Love it!”)

That’s only the obvious difference. Far more important is the silent ubiquity of the computer. From the weather forecasts on cell phones to confirmation of reservations to remote check-in to tracking checked luggage, everything is done, or can be, with a few taps on a keyboard. In my case, it can’t. But I have a traveling companion who can do not only all those things; she can also hear and understand the incredibly garbled announcements on terminal loudspeakers, read the fine print on labels, and simplify complicated instructions so that I can act on them. She’s invaluable.

After years of obsessing over delays, missed connections, and weather, I’ve finally been able to appreciate her vision of multi-connection air travel: You enter a great aluminum tube and resign yourself to its machinery; and eventually, one way or another, you emerge at the other end. All you really have to do (besides listening to the instructions in Bengali on the loudspeaker) is just what they tell you to do if you have to use one of the escape slides: fold your arms across your chest and jump on.

It started with a cab ride to the airport. Warned that the cab usually arrives a few minutes early, I was out at the curb with my bags when he got there. Smooth ride to Logan; the predicted crush had yet to materialize, even on the drive down from Vermont. Easy time though Security; she has some mystical pre-approval and I use a wheelchair, so we zoom right through, prostheses and all. The plane boarded on time Then – uh-oh – a 45-minute delay at the gate for “paperwork.” Our 37-minute connection in Charlotte looked less and less likely. But where once upon a time that would have evoked panic, I reflected that once before we’d spent a night in a Charlotte airport hotel, and I’d scored a fantastic plate of barbecued ribs. No worries.

Then, mirabile dictu, the aforementioned electronics kicked in, and booked us on a later flight while we were still in the air. A wheelchair person met us, and shortly after landing we were on our way toward Arkansas. My son met us at baggage claim while my daughter-in-law did the loop around the terminal, and we were safe at last in the bosom of family.

Our week was carefully scripted and organized, but utterly relaxed, as well – at least for us guests from far away. Elizabeth, my daughter-in-law, had happened (I think) to hear me complain about a package of skivvies I’d recently bought; so it was off to a bona fide department store (which I miss dearly in Vermont) for a box of Ralph Laurens (woo hoo!) and a great conversation with the lady at checkout, a very lively and talkative Kazakh immigrant. My son, Will, refined his plywood extension to the dining room table, and there were fourteen of us at Christmas Eve dinner. You can imagine the conversations. I couldn’t hear Bea, but saw her engaged at the other end.

We went bowling at an electronic lane with smaller pins and softball-sized balls. Again, no crowds. We returned to Crystal Bridges, the museum of American art built by Alice Walton, Sam’s daughter. We ate at the Catfish Hole, the liveliest restaurant I’ve ever been in. Christmas Day, after opening fantastic homemade presents at one house, the larger family dined again at another one. It was great to be able to sip a bit of whiskey without having to think about what I needed to do next. We flew back in great style, almost on time, and scored the smoothest cab driver I’ve ridden with. It was my turn to pay the cab, which I did with great gusto and a Christmas cheer.