If the walls of John F. Kennedy Airport could talk, it would tell you that it was a way station, a place to pass through on your way elsewhere.  It would tell you of the millions of lives that have begun a new journey within its bricks and steel.  So it was with my sister Prudence and me.

The stewardess turned us over to my mother and step-father on a cold March afternoon in the arrivals section, along with our suitcases and a brown envelope that contained our documents.  The act of handing over all of our possessions was a pivotal moment in the migration experience that takes place every day at JFK and at other ports of entry into the U.S.  It literally marked the closing of a chapter in my life and the beginning of another.  

I was 13 years old when my mother and stepfather, who had left our native Jamaica for the United States seven years earlier, told my grandmother that the papers that they had filed with US immigration services to have us join them in Poughkeepsie, NY, had been approved.

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Our stalwart grandmother, who had taken care of us in their absence, was glad to hear the news.  It had been long wait, but we were at last to be a family.  Granny said that in “Uncle Sam’s country,” we would have a brighter future.

As a child, I could not at the time grasp the significance of the trip I was to take, but these many decades later as I think back on that day, there is no question that it dramatically changed my life. Indeed, it changed all our lives - forever.

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I noticed the difference between Jamaica and my adopted country the moment we left JFK in the early evening, as on the way to my new home, I spent the two and a half hours in the car with my eyes closed, fearing a collision, as we seemed to be driving on the “wrong side of the road.”  I was to discover the following day that even though the sun was shining brightly, I needed a winter coat to brave the low temperature outside. In the weeks and months after that day, I had to reorient myself and my entire way of thinking - I took tentative steps on moving escalators, drove with my family into New York city to find food from our native country and upon enrolling as a high school student, I became aware that I had an “accent” and was told disparagingly that I came on the “banana boat” by a not so welcoming student-to which I spiritedly replied “it was a Pan American airplane.”  (Pan Am as it was called then, was a very popular airline company).

Newcomers to any country quickly learn to adapt.  So it was for me, as a brand-new immigrant in the United States.