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caused me to overreact. I wasn’t sure which it was.
    I forced myself to sit up and look out again, hoping the scenery wouldn’t set off another bout of panic. Blessedly, it did not. I scanned the view more calmly this time, breathing deeply as I did, noting that the ground far below seemed marshy, with glints of light sparkling from among the grass.
    “It looks like water that’s making it sparkle,” I replied, finding my voice. “That must be swampland.”
    “It is!” Tess said, nodding sagely. “I can see alligators.”
    We were still too far up to see cars clearly, much less alligators, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.
    “Can you count the alligators?” I prodded, hoping to keep her attention focused out of the window a while longer, at least until the heat left my cheeks and redness faded from my eyes.
    Tess counted as high as she could and then threw in some extra numbers for good measure. As she did, I pulled out a tissue, wiped at my face, and blew my nose. By the time she grew bored with counting, I seemed to have myself pretty much under control. At least I could breathe now, and the tightness in my chest was gone, though I still felt shaky and light and clammy.
    I stole another look out the window. The empty marshland was now sprinkled with farms and towns. I was amazed again at the flatness of itall, the greenness. The Louisiana landscape was utterly foreign and yet somehow completely familiar to me, though I doubted that my familiarity was based on anything real. Maybe I had seen pictures or something. Maybe I just wanted to think I could remember.
    “Look, Mommy. Houses.”
    Knowing we would probably reach the ground in about ten minutes, I told Tess it was time for us to straighten up and put all of her things away.
    “This was fun,” she said emphatically as she gathered together her dolls and their tiny clothes. “Mommies almost never just play.”
    Ouch.
    “I play with you all the time, honey,” I replied evenly, trying not to sound hurt. Good grief, I made a point of sitting down with her nightly, no matter how tired or stressed I was from work, giving her a good half hour of undivided attention between bath and bed, to read or draw or play any game she wanted. “We almost never miss a night.”
    “Yeah, but that’s because you have to,” she said, cramming the dolls into her carry-on bag. “I like it better when you want to.”
    I let that one roll around in my head for a while without comment as we finished putting our things away. Even today on the plane, I hadn’t
wanted
to spend so much time playing with her. I had done it just because I’d had no other choice. Was that one of the reasons I struggled so with parenting, because I interacted out of obligation while other mothers did it simply because it was something they enjoyed? Not having any close friends who were mothers themselves, I had no answer for that question.
    “You’re right. That was fun,” I said finally, wishing I really meant it. “Maybe we can get something new to play with on the flight back.”
    “Okay!”
    I tucked our bags under the seats in front of us. As we angled toward the treetops, I placed an arm across Tess’s chest and looked out the window, noting how the rows of dark roofs were punctuated here and there by bright blue tarps. In the row behind us, I heard a man explaining to his seatmate that the tarps were there to cover the roofs that still awaited repair after Hurricane Katrina.
    “We made it,” I said, pulling my arm back as we taxied to a stop at the gate.
    As we waited for the airplane doors to open, I took a deep breath, thinking about my shocking anxiety attack and the fear that I would have to be carried from the plane in a straightjacket. I didn’t know what that whole thing had been about, but as the doors opened and Tess and I got in line to file off, I decided that for now at least I really was okay. My body and mind were back to normal and under control.
    After