About 20 years ago a friend invited me to attend her wedding ceremony at down at the Municipal Building down at City Hall in Manhattan. When we arrived, there were people lined up all down the corridor waiting their turn. No party was larger than five or six people. Space is limited of course.
As I stood looking down the hallway, I saw people of every color, every race, speaking dozens of different languages and wearing the traditional wedding attire of at least as many ethnic and religious groups. Nor was everyone wearing the traditional dress of their own group. My friend, who was of the whitest of white wasp DAR stock, wore a beautiful red silk qipao (Chinese wedding dress) she had custom made. After the ceremony we went to have dim sum in Chinatown. Quite a few Chinese women came over to ask my friend about her dress and compliment her on it.
I think about that day a lot. We were all different but all the same. We all just let each other be whatever else we were besides New Yorkers or Americans. I don't think I was ever as proud of being an American, because what I saw was the dream America dreams of itself, even if the waking reality has rarely measured up to the dream for a lot of people, even if it's becoming more and more of a nightmare for those who aren't white and those who believe in that dream.
