As much as she had wanted to be with me, my mother could not overcome her fear of flying and attend the convention. But she was waiting for me at the airport when I returned to New York, and the swarm of media cameras caught our joyful reunion on film.

In the photo, we are wrapped in a tight embrace, my mother's head resting against my shoulder, her face shining with sheer bliss. My mother was a tiny woman, not even five feet tall, and by then the ravages of osteoporosis had diminished her even more. The angle of the photograph makes me seem the stronger one in every way. Although I am only five feet, four inches tall myself, I tower over my mother, and my protective hold gives the impression that I am her caretaker. But pictures never tell the entire truth. Our relationship was so much more complex than that.

When I look at this picture, which I often do, my eyes are inevitably drawn to my mother's gnarled, arthritic hands. One clutches my shoulder. The other is pressed against my back. Those hands tell a story.

My mother, Antonetta Ferraro, was a crochet beader. From the time she was fourteen, her fingers were busy, working deftly, her body bent forward over the large wooden beading frame. She crocheted spangles and imitation pearls, glittering pieces of glass, onto the satins, silks, and chiffons worn to weddings, galas, and balls.

She had no glitter inher life, but Antonetta did have a design in her head -- a design that imitated the success stories of other immigrant families. She understood the value of education, not just for my brother, Carl, but for me, the daughter, the girl. She fashioned my life, my future, in the same way she worked the fabrics -- carefully, with a skillful eye.

My nomination to the second-highest office in the land was her proudest moment. When I stood in front of the delegates and spoke about my immigrant heritage, I was overcome by the feeling that this moment belonged to her and to her mother more than it belonged to me. I remember how much I wanted to reach out with every word and hand them a return on their investment.

I knew in my heart that I would not be standing on that stage had my grandmother Maria Giuseppa Caputo not stood in steerage with her maiden aunt on the "SS Italia" and crossed to America in 1890. I would not have had the resources to run for Congress in 1978 if my mother, Antonetta Ferraro, hadn't impressed upon me the value of education, a privilege she herself was denied. Like countless others from my generation, I reaped the benefits of the sacrifices and hard labor of my immigrant legacy. I was the beneficiary of my mother's dreams -- the ones she could not keep for herself but saved for me as a remarkable trousseau.

It occurs to me that the pioneers are never themselves heralded as heroes. They clear the path so that others may make a safe journey to their destination. Yet it is they who take the risks, who suffer to advance their dreams. By the time I had achieved the full potential of the American dream, it was no longer unthinkable that a woman could sit inCongress, become vice president or even president. Others had fought the worst battles before me. I stood on their backs to reach the gold ring. By the time my own two daughters embarked on their careers, in business and in medicine, the paths to their goals were already well worn.

It took me most of my lifetime to understand that my grandmother and my mother were my true role models. It wasn't readily apparent. My grandmother was Italian, bound by language and tradition to a world I never knew. My mother was a first-generation Italian American, straddling the past and the future -- serving as a bridge between the two worlds. She could speak to her mother in her language and to me in mine. But I was all American, a modern woman, impatient with the past. My focus was on the future. I was eager to break free of the restrictions that women like my grandmother and mother experienced. I deemed these limitations intolerable. My grandmother and mother had been raised in eras when education and independence were not considered, or even desirable, for women. Dominated by strong men, they fell naturally into supporting roles. Constrained as they were by the daily task of caring for others, their identities did not belong to them but to their husbands, their children, and to large extended families with never-ending needs.

They were also controlled by the most powerful force of all -- a set of cultural customs and mandates that belonged to another world, across the ocean, but had planted it