She boarded with a stuffed bear and eyes too old for five years.
We were already late out of Minneapolis, wind gusting over the runway like God didn’t want us leaving. I was flight attendant number two on Pan Am Flight 67 to Los Angeles. Back then, the uniform still had weight. Crisp navy blue, white gloves, heels polished even on long hauls. We weren’t waitresses — we were ambassadors, women of the sky.
It was April of ’79. The seats smelled like tobacco and Jet-A. Nobody complained about legroom because nobody expected comfort from steel and sky. And yet, every time that little girl smiled, you could’ve sworn the whole cabin softened around her.
Her name was Maddie. The mother, Sandra, never called her Madeleine, only Maddie, like holding the full name would make the truth heavier.
Maddie had a kind of quiet that didn’t belong to children. She looked out the window as if she was trying to memorize it all — the clouds, the engines, the world shrinking below. I asked if she wanted a coloring book. She shook her head and said, “I just want to see things.”
That was the first time I had to excuse myself and cry in the galley.
She was going to Disneyland.
Make-A-Wish wasn’t as big back then. They worked through small hospitals, whispers between nurses. Maddie had leukemia, the kind that doesn’t ask for permission and doesn’t wait for treatment. They’d done all they could. The doctors gave her six weeks, tops. So Sandra cashed in her last favors, and someone pulled a string to get them on our flight.
First class, window seat. I’d seen executives in thousand-dollar suits act like animals over upgrades. But that day, no one argued. When the gate agent announced the reason for her seat, the whole lounge went quiet. One businessman stood and offered his place without looking back.
She sat by the window like she belonged there.
At thirty-four thousand feet, the sky is a liar.
It paints the world in gold and makes you believe in forever. Maddie looked up and said, “Mom, is this what heaven feels like?”
Sandra didn’t answer. Her eyes were glass, her hands trembling around a paper cup of ginger ale. I sat across the aisle during the meal service, watching them.
Maddie shared her peanuts with the bear, Mr. Bramble, seatbelt fastened beside her. She kept pressing her face to the cold window, pointing out every shape in the clouds.
“That one’s a castle,” she said. “And that one’s a pony. Do they have ponies in California?”
Sandra smiled — a broken thing stitched together for her daughter’s sake. “I think so, sweetheart.”
The man across the aisle, a grizzled contractor with calloused hands, pulled a worn Polaroid from his wallet and handed it to Maddie. It was of his daughter on a pony, birthday balloons in the background. He didn’t say a word, just nodded.
Maddie beamed like he’d given her the moon.
I’ve served champagne to presidents and bandages to bruised children mid-air.
But nothing prepared me for what Sandra whispered when we hit cruising altitude.
“It’s only a short trip,” she said, brushing Maddie’s hair back. “Enjoy it.”
She wasn’t talking about the flight.
I froze. My hand clutched the beverage cart like it might steady something in me. The words lodged in my chest and never came out. Not then, not now.
I’ve thought about that sentence more than any I’ve ever heard. It was love, surrender, grief, all in ten syllables. It was a mother telling her daughter — and maybe herself — to find joy, even in the countdown.
Landing in L.A. felt like falling from heaven.
When the wheels touched, Maddie clapped. Everyone joined in. Even the pilot stepped out to meet her. We had flowers waiting on the jet bridge. Mickey Mouse was supposed to meet her at the gate, but traffic delayed him. She didn’t care. She just wanted the sun.
I walked them out to baggage claim, breaking protocol. Sandra thanked me and pressed something into my hand — a tiny red ribbon from Maddie’s hair.
“She said you looked like a movie star,” Sandra said.
I laughed then, even as tears blurred everything.
They disappeared into the terminal. I never saw them again.
Forty-six years in the sky, and I still cry when the sun hits the window just right.
I kept that ribbon in my jewelry box, beside my Pan Am wings and the photo of my own daughter. She’s forty now, lives in Ohio. The world spun on.
Pan Am folded. The uniforms went to thrift stores and Halloween parties. Airports grew cold and crowded, strangers packed tighter, faces in screens instead of clouds.
They don’t let you serve peanuts anymore.
But sometimes, when the light fades golden through an airport window and I see a little girl staring out with wonder in her eyes, I think of Maddie. I wonder if she made it to the teacups ride. If the castle looked like the one she imagined in the sky. If her last laugh was wrapped in sunlight.
I never asked her favorite song. I never asked what she’d name a pony.
But I remember her eyes. And how, even on borrowed time, she found something to marvel at.
The window seat was always hers.
And whenever I fly now — even in coach, knees cramped, tray table stuck — I ask for the window. Not for the view, but for her.
Because somewhere above the clouds, where time bends and memory flickers like runway lights in the fog, a little girl with a stuffed bear is still looking out. Still smiling.
Still reminding us: it’s a short trip.
Enjoy it.
