The cold air above it breaks apart, he had told me. Or the storm just gets all ropy and weak.

In other words, one side gives up.

At the airport, the gate agent who checked us in looked at my passport. “Happy birthday!” she sang, all teeth, something my own mother hadn’t remembered to say.

•

The panic attack hit just as the plane leveled after takeoff

What if a tornado comes now?

What if the plane just falls out of the sky?

What if the ground swallows us whole?

I started shaking so hard that my father, who was in the seat beside me with his eyes closed, felt it. He covered my hand with his. “What’s wrong, Diana?”

What I meant to say: Everything.

What came out: “I don’t want her to come home.”

His fingers stilled over mine, and then squeezed. “Of course you do,” he said, as if I’d just told him the sky is green when it obviously is blue.

I turned away from him, feeling betrayed. If anyone should understand, it would be him.

A fly that had stowed away on this flight buzzed in front of me, landing on the window. I watched it bat up against the thick glass, over and over, like it only now realized it had made a colossal mistake and wanted to be on the other side.

•

Because we had just flown in and it was my birthday, my father let me pick the take-out food. We ate Thai from the place I loved, where they always gave us free dumplings. My father scooped ice cream from a carton in the freezer and put a birthday candle in it and sang to me and we both pretended we were happy.

He told me I could unpack tomorrow after school, but I liked things in their proper places. So before I went to bed, I unzipped my little suitcase, planning to put my dirty clothes in the hamper and hang up the ones that needed to go in the closet.

On top of my clothes there was a folded note addressed in my mother’s handwriting.

Happy birthday, Diana, it said on the outside.

Inside was a list.

1. Eggs.

2. World records

3. News stories

4. Bad habits

5. New jeans

6. 6. Piñata

7. Glass ceilings

Things that are great when they are broken …

There was also a present, wrapped in pink tissue paper and sealed with Scotch tape. I opened it up to find a glow stick.

I tore open the foil wrapper and snapped the glow stick. Almost immediately, it turned neon green in my hands, luminous and bright.

Broken things can be beautiful.

This was my mother, trying to be a mother. Other mothers would have known what to say before I left. Would have hugged me and instinctively been my safe space.

Would have been sitting next to me on the plane.