The day before my 63rd birthday, I found out that my son had planned a trip and was leaving me behind to look after 18 children. I didn’t say anything at all. On my birthday itself, he called: “Mom, where are you?” I smiled: “Don’t worry … Venice is beautiful!”

Ahead of me lay Venice, and for the first time in thirty-seven years of motherhood, I was choosing myself. The chaos I left behind in Sacramento was nothing compared to the symphony of panic that erupted when David realized his safety net had vanished into thin air, but I wouldn’t know about that chaos for hours. At that moment, I was thirty thousand feet above the Midwest, sipping champagne in first class and watching America shrink beneath cotton-white clouds.

The flight attendant, a kind woman named Linda with silver hair and laugh lines, kept checking on me. “First time to Venice?” she asked during the meal service. “First time anywhere in twenty years,” I admitted, surprised by how easy it felt to talk to a stranger.

“My husband always said we’d travel someday.”

“Well, honey,” Linda said with a knowing smile, “sometimes someday has to become today.”

Meanwhile, back in Sacramento, David was experiencing what I’d later learn was a complete meltdown. Jessica, dressed in her carefully chosen Napa Valley outfit, stood in their marble foyer with her Louis Vuitton luggage,