Coming to America

Eight years in America, today.

Growing up in a third world country, America was to me what Canaan was to the Israelites.  It was a vision of hope. 

As a child, I dreamed of coming here.  That dream waxed stronger with the years---fueled by  desperation, fed by hunger and want.  Where I come from, every other person wants to go to America, and everyone who’s here is the envy of every other person back there.   But more than a status symbol, coming to America is the prize of hard work and hope.  Not everyone can come; those that can  are the blessed few. 

It’s been eight years since we first stepped onto American soil and the experience of coming here was not unlike that of the first Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth Rock, or that of the European immigrants landing into the New York harbor.  We landed  at the San Francisco  airport with only a few dollars  in our pockets and bucketsful of hope—my husband, my son and I.

Our arrival onto American soil more than eight years ago was the last step of what  had been indeed, a journey of hope. I begged and fought to come here.  It was a personal odyssey ten years in the making.  For us, and vicariously, for  the generations of our clan before us  that have toiled away their lives in  want--- it was  a  triumph over  poverty. The bond had been unshackled. The cycle had been  broken.  The walls of Jericho had fallen. We have crossed the border into the promised land.

The realization of a better future for our  child  was born that day.  He will grow up not only living his dreams but ours, too, and that of his forefathers’. 

In this season of thanksgiving, I am grateful for my roots.  I am thankful for hope.  And I thank God for bringing us to America.  Thank God for America.