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an elderly person, or a pregnant woman, or a wife who wanted to sit next to her husband. I was hopeful.
    Standing outside her condo with a massive suitcase and an overnight bag, having packed enough clothing for an entire month or lifetime, whichever came first, she was picked up at the designated time. “Maybe I’ll stay for a few extra weeks,” she had told me the night before, when she listed all the clothing she was bringing. I heard in her voice something I had never heard before: loneliness.
    She got to the JetBlue terminal and checked her suitcaseoutside with baggage claim, and (the neighbor/car service driver told me) handed a crisp ten-dollar bill to the bag handler, telling him he was a lovely, lovely kind man. He deeply appreciated her gesture. Little did he know that the remaining ten or so crisp ten- and twenty-dollar bills that she had tucked ever so neatly into her wallet would make their way to others who smiled, offered a hand, let her get ahead in line, and helped her with her carry-on.
    She made her way up to the counter, where a ticket should be waiting for her. Yes, the agent told her, there was a ticket, but she must go to the gate in order to get a window seat.
    She went through the whole security scene, and I am told by the neighbor/car service guy about the taking off of her shoes, the removing of her belt, the telling of a joke or two about her hip replacement
after she in fact set off the security alarm
and how the sound once reminded her of the old days in Las Vegas when someone won at the slots, and it was a sound filled with “good wishes.”
    “No more,” she said loudly, as if telling it to every single person on the security line. “It’s a phony sound. It has no heart. Gimme back my shoes.”
    The neighbor/car service guy could not go any farther with my mom. The rules. The companion person from JetBlue now met her, thankfully.
    There was no window seat available. She had an aisle seat. No one wanted to give up a seat.
    This is where I get to relive the whole crazy scenario as it was repeated to me, beat by beat, blow by excruciating blow. My mother threw a shit storm of a nut-dance, flung a racialslur at the African American flight attendant, and then, if that weren’t enough, caused another passenger who was somewhat overweight to break down and cry. “You know how fat you are? You have your own zip code.”
    She was escorted off the plane, and somehow managed to get back to her condo by renting a car, even though she had an expired license. I would just love to meet the Avis rental person who gave my mom a red Mustang to tool around in.
    She called me in absolute hyper-hysterics. She wanted me to fire every single one of those nasty, bitchy flight attendants, and pilots, and the copilot—he was as much to blame. And where was her luggage, her
fucking
luggage? “I bet they stole it. They stole it and you should fire them, the whole lot of them. Now. I want you to fire them now.”
    “Okay, Ma. I’m gonna fire them now.”
    I found out from another very cordial and patient JetBlue rep that her luggage was on its way to New York. I was in Los Angeles on business; my brother was at a birthday celebration on Long Island. Neither one of us had expected this hailstorm. I tried to deal with the airport bureaucracy and arranged for my mom’s luggage to make its way to Fort Lauderdale within forty-eight hours, barring no glitches.
    The administrator on the phone told me it was like an unstoppable chaotic ruckus, a tornado, a whirlwind. “Your mother is old and frail and disruptive.”
    Holy shit.
    I felt sad. I felt horribly sad and, dare I say, embarrassed, wholly, deeply, immensely embarrassed, because this old frail woman is, in fact,
my mom
.
    “While we really appreciate your business, we must inform you that your mother, Beatrice, will no longer be able to fly with us.”
    This did not surprise me. I told the JetBlue representative that my mom has the beginning stages of