Immigrant Experience

Immigrant Experience

I remember the day my mother would dream and speak of going to America. She said it was the greatest place with work and opportunities all over the great country. Americans where clean cut my mother would say and that they were the nicest people you would ever meet. I often told myself that I would love to go here and get away from Italy and start a new chapter, hell maybe find an American woman to bring home to my parents and have little American/Italian babies. This day soon came when I turned 18 and my father told me to grab a satchel and fill it with whatever could fit. I was along for the opportunity that my mother had mentioned. As my father and I rode up to the ship it was like nothing I had ever seen before. The steam pipes as my father called them where as tall as the statue of liberty in my eyes. As we boarded I saw the “fancy people” as I liked to call them go upstairs, but yet we were going far downstairs which I didn’t understand why. People would give me dirty looks or turn their noses up to me. Americans where not like this I thought, my mother had mentioned kind and caring, these where assholes. As the ship departed I was surrounded by friendlier people than upstairs. At this point I didn’t care about upstairs because I felt comfortable with the people I was surrounded by. As the trip went on I heard a loud horn blow three times, we were then able to go up top and see the view of New York. Boy was I in for a treat, I can remember the beautiful copper woman holding a torch and a book. I don’t recall what was on that book but do remember her face and it was as beautiful as ever. In my head I was telling myself that I wanted to meet a woman like that. As we docked into a New York harbor I remember waiting for hours while