“Do you remember her?” he asked.
He held up a photograph, attached to the corner of a legal-sized brown folder. I looked through the blurred plexiglass divider that separated us. I saw a young girl’s face: green eyes, pale complexion, long red hair.
We sat across from one another inside a small, plain room in a government office, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. It was in an unassuming building on Knapp Street in Milwaukee, close to Lake Michigan.
I nodded, wiping away tears. A single thought came: I would never be this version of me again.
The photograph had been taken for my green card, many years ago in England, just after my mother and brother died. I was thirteen. My expression carried the weight of grief I was too young to fully understand.
I wondered how the photograph could look so new when it had traveled so far.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a kind voice. “But I enjoyed learning about your story.”
I wondered what else was hidden inside the brown folder. Did it contain a chronicle of my life, a map of love and loss?
“Congratulations!” he said, standing up. “You have passed your naturalization interview and citizenship test!” I exhaled in relief.
“You should receive the date of your Naturalization Ceremony in the next few days.”
I drove across Milwaukee. Charcoal clouds against a pale blue sky. Something felt different, although it was hard to name. An ease settled over me. I felt grounded, anchored by the place itself.
I drove down familiar streets on Milwaukee’s south side, where cream-colored brick bakeries and towering churches had stood the test of time. Old steeples rose against the skyline, church bells rang faintly in the distance. The green copper dome of the Basilica of St. Josaphat rose high above the other buildings. Colorful murals were visible, telling stories of generations who had built their lives here. I remembered the first night in Milwaukee with my father. I saw the brilliance of gold leaves fluttering and falling from the trees.
*
On our first night here after relocating to the United States, from England, over thirty years earlier, my father and I walked through the deserted streets of the east side of Milwaukee. It was the height of summer, the air heavy and warm.
“We’re just like the first immigrants,” my father said with excitement. His blue eyes were flecked with silver. He had finally realized his lifelong dream of moving here.
Together we wandered through the Italian district of Milwaukee, a neighborhood that fascinated my father, the cartographic historian. The street was lined with bakeries and delicatessens, red, white, and green flags above doors. Through the storefront windows, we looked at displays of pink and white sugar meringues and intricate three-tiered wedding cakes.
We walked through the city, over the concrete pavers of the sidewalk, each one stamped with dates and the names of the manufacturers. My father tried to find the oldest year.
That night, he had one lesson to teach me: our footsteps were not the first footsteps—they were imprinted upon those of others before us. Immigrants have always arrived this way: quietly, uncertainly, carrying their losses, adding their weight to the ground.
Five years later, my father died unexpectedly. He was fifty-nine. I was twenty-one.
*
In the days after my interview, I checked the mailbox each day, hoping to see the letter confirming my final step in becoming a citizen: my naturalization ceremony. Finally, the letter came in a stiff white envelope! My Naturalization Oath Ceremony was scheduled for the day before the 2020 election.
I carried my green card, my appointment paperwork, and a second form of photo identification. When I handed my green card to the officer seated at a table, I did so with reluctance. I had guarded that card for years, always aware of where it was, especially when I traveled. The young girl in the photograph had long been separated from me, sealed beneath plastic, tucked inside a brown folder. When I finally let the card go, I felt as though she had been returned to me.
In a small room, with social distancing in place, along with four other candidates for citizenship, we said our silent goodbyes to our homelands and took our oaths to defend the Constitution. Our muffled voices, filtered through surgical masks, sounded small in relation to the enormity of the promise we were making. There were no jubilant cries, only polite, measured applause as we stepped forward to receive our Certificates of Naturalization. Because our faces were masked, only our eyes smiled.
The entire ceremony took about four minutes. It had taken decades to arrive there.
When I walked back out into the chilly Milwaukee air, I felt a steadiness settle inside me—a sense of being at home in a place I had chosen, and that had, in its imperfect way, chosen me back.
*
This country is loud with arguments now about who belongs here and who does not. About who gets to stay, who gets to speak, who gets to matter. I think of that photograph—the thirteen-year-old girl with sadness in her eyes—and I know that no one could have convinced her, then, that one day she would stand inside a government building and swear herself to a country that was still arguing with itself.
I became a citizen not because America is finished, but because it is still being made. Because it is shaped, over and over again, by people who arrive believing they can help hold it together.
When I walk through my neighborhood now, past the bakeries and churches, I walk with my father still. Our lives are cast in streets and roads, city blocks with numbers, others with names. We walk in silence. We walk with those who came before us. And we walk with those who will come after—still searching for a place willing to let them belong.
Image Credit: Anonymous, “New York—Welcome to the Land of Freedom…” (1887)
