A month after we buried my husband, my mother asked us to come stay so I could set the grief down for a few days. The plane was full, so Harriet, nine, sat one row behind me while I held her four-month-old brother. The woman in the next seat looked offended before the wheels left the ground. If that baby starts screaming, she said, I am not sitting here listening to it. I am warning you. He slept at first. Hours later he woke hungry. I rocked him, offered the pacifier, then drew a nursing cover over us and began to feed him. She sighed as if the cabin had been built for her alone. She had paid for her seat. She would not watch this. How shameless.

I told her I was sorry and that he needed to eat on a five-hour flight. People with babies should stay home, she said, loud enough that strangers turned. What kind of mother cannot calm her own child. Then lock yourself in the bathroom, she added. Have some shame.