My first plane trip was on an Air Force prop . . . transatlantic . . . through a storm that tossed the plane from side to side . . . sideways, up and down, lightening, women crying, children crying. Women calling in French for all the familiarity they'd left behind . . . clutching magazine pictures of America given to them by their men in between sheets. Most all of them never having been in an airplane before let alone leaving their country, their village, their known . . . the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker . . . all that had been familial left behind for a country whose ways, whose language, whose men they could barely understand.

Between the seats and in the aisles we children played with one another . . . those of us who weren't crying, who weren't sick, who weren't being clutched by our mothers. My baby brother was sick, held in my mother's arms. Our fathers weren't with us . . . having been flown ahead. Men who came and went, mostly in silence, barely able to speak to their French wives . . . trying to Americanize their offspring in brief moments . . . father's frustrated, women expecting their lives as those shown in magazines . . . and we children trying to refract whatever culture seemed to be called upon at the moment . . .

I remember looking up at my mother . . . seeing but not understanding the tears held back . . . the set of her mouth . . . her determination . . . the legacy of women . . .

Many times I would fly between continents afterwards and receive my little "wings" from flight attendants . . . but only this flight . . . this time will stay with me . . .

the strength and the sadness of women . . .