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Before I met my husband, my credit card was a means to purchase things I could not afford to buy. Then, I reasoned, I could simply render the minimum payment each month and eventually own the item or items outright. Only problem was, I did not understand interest and had no clue that I was actually paying much more for the item than I “paid” for it.

I had three credit cards. Not a pretty picture.

Enter older man, wiser man, man who did know about these things and taught me the value of paying off a credit card fully each month. Before I married him, I still could not afford to do that; but as a wedding present, I used my last paycheck from my employer to pay off my credit card bills.

He married me free and clear of debt. It has remained that way with credit cards ever since. Now the one credit card we own is a means to delay full payment for a short time. In 26 years of marriage, we have always paid the bill in full. That, I now know, is to our advantage.

Let’s turn the clock back to Friday, January 20. That day, our daughter departed on a college-sponsored trip to the British Virgin Islands. She left on a bus that transported her to Charlotte, where she boarded a plane with two professors and 12 friends for a seven-day sailing excursion, beginning at Tortola and docking at other exotic locales like Jost Van Dyke and Virgin Gorda.

The last word we had from her was a brief phone call from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands to let us know her plane had landed.

Since January 20, we have had no idea where she has been or what she is doing. We do know that she is putting to use the skills she learned to sail a boat. The requirements for the trip included three weeks of classes learning about navigation, charts, ropes, sails, knots and every other little thing that sailors need to know. On this trip, she, her fellow students and the professors are actually sailing the boats with no trained guides. Fortunately for her, the professors are accomplished sailors.

We had advised her not to call due to the expense of roaming charges but to just enjoy this adventure of a lifetime. We had hoped she would be able to find an Internet cafÇ somewhere so she could e-mail us to assure us that everything was going well.

No cell phone call. No email messages. After nearly a week, this mother’s knot in the belly was beginning to tighten a bit. Along about Monday, I realized that I would be able to check the credit card online to see if she had been charging anything. That would at least give me an indication that she had not fallen overboard but was alive and well, doing what every good female does best — shop!

Monday, no charges. Tuesday, no charges. The knot was constricting even more and there was now an ache in the heart as well.

It’s rare that several days go by without talking to my daughter, either over the phone or through e-mail. This has been a first for me, to have her leave on a journey to a distant place without a personal hug and goodbye, without knowing or meeting most of the people she is spending this time with and without a consistent way to stay in touch. I think they call this “letting go.”

And then Wednesday, there she was! My girl! My darling daughter. Not once, not twice, but five times on the MasterCard account, there was evidence that she is alive and well. The knot loosened, the heart sang a little, and all was well.

Like Dr. Frankenstein, I felt like screaming, “She’s alive; she’s alive!” And that’s what MasterCard means to me.

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