The husband was a serious-looking guy of maybe 35, freshly barbered with a longish face and a close-trimmed beard, wearing a tweed sports jacket – a bit overdressed for summer in New York. He was pulling the 3-year-old boy along and lugging the 2-year-old boy in his arms, while his wife, her hair mostly hidden under a beret, maneuvered the pink bundle of their baby along with the stroller down the stairs to the boarding gate.

"Taking the kids to America to visit the grandparents?" I asked as I offered a hand at the lower end of the stroller. She nodded yes, concentrating on maneuvering the stroller from above. At the bottom of the stairs, she thanked me distractedly, reuniting with her family to pass through the final boarding check, and I lost sight of them in the crush of travelers.

The husband ended up with the two boys in seats right behind me, however, while she sat a dozen rows further back. Maybe late booking had kept them from arranging seats together. Or maybe she knew enough to stay away from him on long intercontinental flights.

All through the slamming of overhead compartments and the arranging of blankets, pillows, seatbelts, and reading materials by passengers, 3-year-old Asher, in the window seat, took the lead role in a noisy skit called "Displeased and Cantankerous." While his younger brother happily investigated the silver seatbelt buckles and the hinged ash-tray cover in the arm-rest, Asher twisted and made colicky objecting noises while his father attempted to get his jacket off, his nose wiped, and the seatbelt clamped around him. They made a squirmy, loud island in our sector, and near neighbors began to pay apprehensive attention to them.

The plane was starting to taxi toward take-off when the father, also ascending to the next level, announced loudly enough to involve everyone around him: “Asher, if you don't sit in your chair, I'm going to tell them to take you off the plane. Do you want me to tell them to take you off the plane? Sit down now and I won't tell them to take you off the plane. Just sit in your seat, Asher. Asher, the plane is moving. Open the window shade and you'll see the plane is moving. Asher, open the shade. Open the window shade, Asher. Asher, don't you want to see the plane moving?”

“Jiiiinnnk,” Asher yelled, changing the subject. In cantorial embellishment, he extended the sound and then repeated it several times. ““Ahwa jiiiinnnk. Jink jink jiiiinnnk.” All the while, he was cunningly contorting himself to outwit the seatbelt.

“You want a drink? Do you want apple juice? Okay, Asher, stop crying and Daddy will get you apple juice. I'm going right now to ask the lady to give you apple juice. Sit down, Asher. If you sit down and put on your seat belt, Daddy will get you apple juice.”

Asher seemed to accept this deal, while the plane accelerated toward liftoff. But by the time Daddy returned holding a plastic cup of juice, Asher was halfway up the aisle, yelling “No no, no no, NO.” The red swizzle stick that the stewardess, hoping to please, had inserted at a saucy angle in the plastic cup was wrong. Asher was not pleased, and his wailing billowed up like a parachute over our sector of the plane as we became airborne.

“You don't want the stick? Okay, Daddy's taking the stick away. Look, Asher, Daddy's taking the stick OUT of the glass." With a large theatrical gesture, he extracted the swizzle stick from the cup and concealed it behind him. “You see, Asher? No more stick. Okay, Asher? Now sit down and Daddy will give you your juice.”

Though Asher's face was red with crying and his upper lip had become a highway for snot, he was actually a handsome chap, wide-shouldered and manly, with auburn hair and an intelligent face. A sleeping Asher would have looked angelic, but this Asher soon wrestled himself out of his seatbelt again and scrambled, slippery as a mud-wrestler, through his father's grasp and into the aisle, where the stewardesses had begun to serve drinks and honeyed peanuts from their welcome wagons.

There was a sudden resounding thunk as a serving cart collided with Asher's head.

For a brief moment we had complete silence. Though the cart had not been moving quickly, Asher lay on his back in the aisle as if dead, open eyes staring up. The stewardess, her eyebrows pinched into two small birds of worry, her mouth a silent O of alarm, peered on tiptoes over the edge of the cart at him.

Asher proved that he had survived by winding up through the decibels like a jet engine.

“Asher, get out of the aisle! Sit down in your seat, Asher! Daddy will tell them to put you off the plane if you don't sit down! Do you hear me? Daddy will tell them to put you off the plane right now!” (We were at 25,000 feet and climbing.)

And then salvation arose. A sweet-faced grandmother a few rows ahead knew exactly what to do. Turning in her seat to Asher, without a word she held out to him – a cookie. Her look was pure love. Their negotiation required no sound at all, but Daddy didn't know that: “Look, Asher – do you want a cookie? That nice lady has a cookie for you. Go get the cookie, Asher. Asher – do you want a cookie?"

Asher, not listening, tentatively sidestepped up the aisle, keeping an eye out for low-flying serving carts, while the grandmother ahead nodded and smiled encouragingly to him. He took the cookie from her fingers at arm's length like an in-flight refueling and retreated back to his seat. “Now you have a cookie,” his father explained to him. “Did you thank the nice lady for the cookie – Asher?”

Asher, working an edge of sugar with his upper teeth, didn't answer. But that cookie must have had some special drug in it, some deep, absorbing pacifier, for after finishing it down to its crumbs, Asher, like his unobtrusive little brother, slept through the night; and, finally, so did we. . . all the way to Grandmother’s house.