Struggle and Chaos in three Countries

Peered out my window looking down from thirty-three thousand feet. A placid azure blue sky surrounded me for now. To be sure there had been turbulence before and there would likely be turbulence again. But for now it was calm and I had long since learned to weather a storm. It is autumn 2012 and I'm planning an expedition - a pilgrimage of sorts. Traveling to my place of birth to visit the family I left behind so far away I yearn to re-trace my roots.Far below ghostly clouds pass indifferently as indifferently as the mists of time have passed by me. As we near our destination I close my eyes and remember that day years ago and the younger woman who left under such different circumstances. The younger woman left with nothing. My older version returns as a self-made woman. I left as a German and returned as a German-American. We left at a moment's notice those years long ago. Only two weeks before I left the first time I could never have foreseen any reason to hotfoot it to Switzerland nor any necessity to immigrate to the United States. Yet for all my changes in fortune now I am in many ways the same person who took that leap of faith years ago - a survivor a maker a take-it-as-it-comes kind of woman.