I only understood that I had planned everything, and that I was holding my sleeping son, and that I did not have the reserves left to fight anyone for anything.

Which was, of course, exactly the calculation the woman in my seat had already made about me, in the half-second it took her eyes to travel from my face to my baby to my daughter and back.

Chapter 2 — Military Precision

We were flying from Chicago to Orlando, where my sister was waiting to help me for a few weeks.

My husband, David, was working long hours on a construction project two states away, and I had not slept more than three hours in a row in over a month.

If you have never done the arithmetic of a newborn and a ten-year-old and no partner in the house and no sleep, I will spare you the details and simply say that by the time this trip came around, I was running on something well past exhaustion, some thin reserve you did not know you had until the ordinary ones are gone.

Which is exactly why I had planned the trip like a military operation.

I did not leave a single thing to chance, because I did not have the reserves to absorb a single thing going wrong.

I paid extra — money we did not really have to spare — for two seats together with extra legroom.

One for Maya.

One for me, holding Leo.

I selected Row 11 myself, on the seat map, weeks in advance.

I confirmed our boarding passes three separate times, checking and rechecking the seat numbers the way you check a stove you have already turned off.

I arrived at O’Hare absurdly early, strollers and diaper bags and a ten-year-old in tow, so that whatever happened, we would not be rushed.