Our washer has been broken for the past month. We've had to wash our clothes either at our next door neighbors' (we're tight like that) or at a laundromat. I came home from work not too long ago and heard a strange man's voice coming from downstairs. My mother finally called Sears and they sent someone over to fix our machine.

My mother was downstairs with him, feeding him (like all good Egyptian women do). She had made him some tea and given him some treats. He was a talker, this man. Nice, old Russian man who was telling a million stories and offering unsolicited advice. Anyhow, I digress.

When he finished, he started to push the washer back against the wall and my mother ran to help him. He started chuckling and said, "You like Russian woman! Russian woman strong, they always help husband!"

My mother has always been a strong woman, and I don't mean just physically. She's always been the rock of this family. She's had to put up with being taken away from her country, her family, her life. She's had to adjust to countries where she knew she didn't belong, where her accent was ridiculed, where she was never able to find her voice. She moved our family from apartment to apartment, from house to house, carrying the heaviest of boxes, lifting the bulkiest of boxes, without ever uttering a complaint, without ever making my father feel like a loser for having uprooted her entire life.

My mother is like Russian woman.