My First Flight

Most Americans have fascinating stories to tell about their first flight ever and the experiences associated with that flight. The stories form a large ball of yarn added to the oral history of humanity, unwritten stories that sometimes are told to friends, strangers, family, and whoever is willing to listen.

One hundred years ago, very few people could have even envisioned that humans would fly on a regular basis inside a metal tube propelled by jet fuel and would be able to reach all corners of the world, not just a small world around their homes, in the city, the village, the dessert, on an island, or a hut in the jungle.

My first airplane flight was in 1978. I was leaving my country of birth which was tightly controlled by the Communist Party with fists, arms, soldiers, agents, policemen, informers, and the military.

I was in a daze, leaving my family behind forever and everything I’ve ever loved and known, moving to the shining city on the hill, across the Atlantic, the mythical America, the land of the free and of the brave. Part of me wanted to go and part of me wanted to stay.

I was happy to escape tyranny, but did I really know what was awaiting me? I was accompanied by my husband and mother-in-law who was just a stranger who smiled a lot and spoke English with a lilting southern accent. Everybody loved her because she was so pretty and sweet.

Would I be able to understand my new home and its people? Would they understand me? Would they accept me, the suspicious foreigner from a communist country? Would they treat me with kindness, would they welcome me in their midst? Would the customs and religion be alien to me? Would I like the food? Would I like where my fresh husband would take me? What would my life be like?

After hiccups at the airport where angry men with Russian guns threatened to take away my tiny gold wedding ring because it was Romanian gold and could not be exported and after my mother-in-law took it off my finger and put it on hers, I sat quietly in my assigned seat, a shaking storm of present and future fear raging in my heart and mind and watched the airplane door. When will it close?  

When no frightening agent came to yank me off the flight, the door finally closed, and the plane started rolling on the tarmac towards alleged freedom, I breathed a deep sigh of relief and started crying quietly.  It was a sad cry of loss, of pain, of inner suffering, of terminal good-byes, and of fear of the unknown. It was not a cry of joy.

After a long flight, we landed in New York on a cold January the 13^th day. I was relieved, bewildered, did not have a dime in my pocket, and the only picture I have from JFK shows a happy, smiling me. But I was not smiling on the inside, I was sad because of fear, apprehension, misery, and loss. On the upside, I thought I was finally free to be me and to speak my mind.

The next leg of the flight carried me south and then, after landing, we took a long drive in the darkness, to the isolated farm where I would spend the next two years of my life.

Knowing what I know today and the experiences I’ve had since my first flight 45 years ago, would I do it again, would I take such a huge life-altering chance and climb the steps onto that Delta airplane bound for America? The answer is a resounding NO.