It’s been a long time since I experienced such physical rage, so thank you for that.

It is a comfort to know that I have it in me to come to the defense of my mothering skills with shaking anger, to raise my voice in a plane full of sleeping people and scream “How dare you!?” when you tell me that my son’s tears of overtiredness and cranky desire for a bed when sleepy (he is his mother’s child) are suffering on the scale of which you have never seen. Did you actually think I was doing nothing except waiting for your precious sleep to be disturbed? That I hadn’t offered him every kind of snack we had, that I hadn’t nursed and rocked and offered every toy, tried every sitting and lying position possible, but just waited for his cries to escalate to such a level that I wanted to knock back a White Russian and wait for death?

Of course, maybe you didn’t know that it’s difficult to keep a two-year-old amused and comfortable and confined on an 11-hour flight, especially when followed by a seven-hour delay.* Or that there’s something that you are lucky enough to be able to take advantage of in this situation–EARPLUGS. And I hope the seatbelt doesn’t get twisted around your neck when you lie down across three seats and sleep for two-thirds of the flight across the Atlantic.

The trip was really fun, although exhausting. More details once I recover (from the flight and the mounds of dirty laundry).

* Thankfully in the airport, not on the tarmac. And with meal vouchers good for four kosher restaurants to boot.